From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: 22 Apr 1999 18:50:51 GMT
Subject: The Future of Tk?
References: <371E964F.C531C2A@istar.ca> <371F11C2.3162025@ciril.fr>
Message-ID: <7fnr2b$mrt$19@newsread.f.de.uu.net>
Content-Length: 1892
X-UID: 1471                                                  

In article <371F11C2.3162025 at ciril.fr>, Frederic BONNET
<frederic.bonnet at ciril.fr> writes
>Hi,
>
>Eugene Dragoev wrote:
>[...]
>> But I also found that while older versions of Tk were using lightweight
...
>> Is there going to be any Tk implementation that will continue using
>> lightweight components?
>
>By lightweight I guess you mean emulated in some way. I don't think that
>cross-platform look&feel consistency is a good thing. As a GUI designer
>I'd rather follow the principle of least astonishment: an app running on
>Windows should look and feel like a Windows app. The same app running on
>MacOS and X should do the same on the respective platforms. Such a
>cross-platform application is not supposed to look and feel the same on
>all platforms. If users want to use the same app on several platforms,
...
I take this completely differently; least astonishment for me is if
program X looks and behaves the same way no matter what keyboard, mouse
and screen I'm using. As a 'user' of the program X it shouldn't matter
what OS/WM is executing the code. I certainly don't want vi or emacs to
be different on the mac why should I treat word or excel differently?

Another reason for having a Tk look and feel is that it allows widget
behaviours different from those allowed by the underlying 'convention'.

Of course those with an interest in the survival of rigid wm systems
prefer we should adhere to their conventions. The only changes then come
from the suppler of such systems and are introduced to make us by new
versions etc.

Competition between different WM's is currently almost impossible
because of the original model ie the 'toplevel' is controlled and
decorated by the WM. We don't have to do that with the widgets inside
the 'toplevel' so why do we? Let 100 flowers bloom etc. 
...
>And I don't speak about look differences.
>
>See you, Fred

-- 
Robin Becker




