RE: Window Managers, A question Part Deux

[Rick Jones <rickya@siservices.net>]

Orn E. Hansen wrote:
> 
>   I'm using it now.  I'ts a good theme... a little slow though (I'm using a 486
> DX2/66 cirrus VLB graphics card), there's a small pause when I enter a windows
> border as it highlights the border.  Other than that, I like it... its a good
> choice.

It's not as mind-blowing as the others but I think it's fairly
impressive for what it is.  It also says "this is not a Microsoft
clone!" or any other for that matter.

Picky, picky, picky.  How long does it take that same machine to boot
WinBlows?  What about moving windows in WinBlows?  I have the same
machine on my LAN and the thing can hardly handle Linux in text mode. 
Well, compared to my Pentium. =)

>   What about...
> 
>   File managers
>   Printer tool
>   E-Mail client
>   News reader
>   Editor

Well, I'm going a step at a time.  Once the actual interface is set,
I'll start building the tools for it.  Would you like to handle one of
those?

>   I've been looking at the GNOME, but there are a few errors in the source
> tarball for it, which prevents me building it.  Like 'gdk_font_free' in the
> gtk_guile library, is missing and nowhere to be found in the sources.  That
> kinda gives a poor impression, but I don't know I'll try poking around (or
> create a dummy routine for it).

Gnome is targetted to be the toolkit for SEUL.  I do think that given
it's severe alpha shakes that we need an interim choice.  I've been
thinking of tk/tcl stuff for that task.  

>   If it is true that the Qt runtime library can be included in the base, than
> I'd definately recomend converting 'kedit' (if possible).  It's good and fast.
> If the same applies for the runtime library of 'xforms' (have you taken a look
> at it?), then xf-mail is a good free e-mail client.

Sure.  But kedit locks up on file I/O at times and leaves.  You loose
everything.  I thought this was due to it's hooks in kfm, which has file
I/O problems as well.  I've also had xfmail take a hike on me while
responding to email when I cut a large section that scrolls the screen
from the original.  It does it fairly regularly in that situation.

The idea behind the runtime libraries is that they can be included *if*
we don't sell some software that depends on it.  That means that no
software can be a part of the base SEUL distro wich depends on such
libs, but it can be in optional/non-free.