[Texmacs-dev] Re: Compiling TexMacs on OSX

[Abdelrazak Younes]

Henri Lesourd wrote:
> Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
>
> > Henri Lesourd wrote:
> >
> > > The default version of TeXmacs doesn't depends
> > > on any Qt lib: we don't want to force a dependency
> > > on that.
> >
> >
> > Well, that was my original "concentrate on one frontend" advice if you 
> > remember.
>
> As far as I understand, "concentrate on one frontend" is not
> the same as "avoid being forced to depend on one underlying
> technology of the frontend", but...

It depends. It could well be that the amount of time needed to adjust 
the calling code from one library to another library is very low 
compared to write everything yourself in order to not be forced to 
depend on this one library. My point is that with open source you are 
not forced to anything. But I agree that if the do-it-yourself code is 
small, it's better not to add a dependency.

> > OK, I think this means that I, personally, won't enjoy (in the literal 
> > sense) control on these things because, well, I don't think there is 
> > much gain in controlling these things, how important they can be.
>
> When there is no control on important things, it usually
> goes together with strong limitations in what you can do
> in the related areas...

I know and accept these limitations as long as this means more free time 
to improve things that I enjoy improving. I guess I am not interested in 
the related areas you are talking about.

> This being said, you can very well say that you are not
> interested in such more advanced possibilities.

Right, things such as dynamically switching from the Xlib or Cocoa 
frontends to the Qt frontend are not very interesting to me. Even though 
this example is not a good one as it is not very hard to achieve. 
Dynamically mixing Cocoa and Qt components running at the same time 
might be harder to achieve on the other hand.

> But its
> very difficult to deny they could exist, and that there
> are lots of uses of such technologies, especially in
> the domain of implementing more dynamic and more user
> hackeable environments.

That sounds like a great goal: the power of interpreted languages 
without their limitations (speed). That's what I understood is your goal 
from this all discussion :-)

Abdel.