[Texmacs-dev] Re: Compiling TexMacs on OSX

[Henri Lesourd]

Abdelrazak Younes wrote:

> 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.

Not completely false ;-(..., although in the case
of TeXmacs GUI, we precisely did this experience,
for the standard TeXmacs GUI is 100% our own
implementation. This is when we realized that
it would be irrealistic to implement ourselves
the native look for all platforms that we went
to this multiplatform wrapping thing.


> My point is that with open source you are not forced to anything.

When code becomes big and hard to refactor,
usually the only answer is revamp and/or
drop things.

Highly reuseable code is expensive, it takes more
than one iterations to refine, usually.


> But I agree that if the do-it-yourself code is small, it's better not 
> to add a dependency.
Thus we finally agree on this one :-).


> > > 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.
Probably.


> > 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.

I don't want to dynamically switch from Xlib
to cocoa or Qt: what I want is, in the context
of one given toolkit (e.g., Qt), to be able to
load a chunk of *new* code which has been developed
independently.

Thus, a TeXmacs user could install TeXmacs
via RPM, then independently develop a
new kind of e.g., Qt filechooser, wrap
it inside a dynamic library, and finally
load this dll inside TeXmacs without ever
needing to recompile TeXmacs.

This would bring complete extensibility
of the TeXmacs's widget set, and would
free *us* (i.e. the TeXmacs developers)
from the need to develop such new widgets
ourselves.