Re: why doesn't gimp use guile?

[Alejandro Forero Cuervo]

       I'm new to the list, guile seems like a
    kick ass idea but how come its not used by
    more apps?

I guess this is some kind of  vicious circle (do you use that expression
in  english?    I'm  translating   literally  from   spanish's  "circulo
vicioso"): Guile is not  available (installed) in most  machines so most
software authors  don't make their software  depend on it.  As  not much
software needs it,  its still optional and many  operating systems don't
install it by default.

For instance, there  is a current discusion in Ion's  mailing list about
adding support  for a real extension  language.  Some people are  in for
Perl while  others scream Guile.   Perl, unfortunately, is  available on
more  platforms so  they might  end  implementing things  in Perl  (even
though, in my humble opinion, Guile's  API for calling Scheme from C and
C from Scheme is MUCH more sane than Perl's braindead XS system).

Besides, making  your software  depend on  one external  application is,
generally  speaking,  bad.   Guile  is one  rather  big  application  so
there are  times when  software authors  might prefer  other lightweight
"languages" that they can even bundle in their applications (such as XML
parsers,  silly parsers  for configuration  files and,  why not,  Gimp's
Scheme interpreter).

In my opinion, one thing that could bring up the number of machines with
Guile  installed  is selling  it  to  the public  as  The  Gnome way  to
configure  software.  This  way it  could be  seen as  a standard  Gnome
component and get installed wherever Gnome is.  Gnome is currently using
libXml for most of its applications' config files.  LibXML is fine and I
think its  maintainer does a very  good job but  I can't get my  self to
like all that JibbaJabba about XML...

Enough ranting. :)

Alejo.
http://bachue.com/alejo

--
The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution.
      -- Albert Einstein.

$0='!/sfldbi!yjoV0msfQ!sfiupob!utvK'x44;print map{("\e[7m \e[0m",chr ord
(chop$0)-1)[$_].("\n")[++$i%77]}split//,unpack'B*',pack'H*',($F='F'x19).
"F0F3E0607879CC1E0F0F339F3FF399C666733333CCF87F99E6133999999E67CFFCCF3".
"219CC1CCC033E7E660198CCE4E66798303873CCE60F3387$F"#Don't you love Perl?

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