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List:       lyx-devel
Subject:    Re: FLTK as the GUI toolkit for LyX
From:       "Asger K. Alstrup Nielsen" <alstrup () diku ! dk>
Date:       1999-09-29 14:19:46
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Uwe> Another point is
Uwe> cross-platform availability for both Linux/Unix and Win32.

Just a quick remark on this:  The support is there, so that FLTK
applications *wrok* on Win32, but they are not nice Win32 applications.
They do not behave like other applications on Win32, and I find that
suboptimal.
It's the same problem with GTK+:  Even though Win32 support is coming
along, the look & feel is not Win32, so therefore, a GTK based version
is also sub-optimal when it comes to Win32 support.  (Unless somebody
will implement a "theme" that is compatible with the win32 native widgets.)

The only true options I have seen for Win32 toolkits are Windows native 
(in C), the Microsoft Foundation Classes which are a relatively thin layer 
on top of the Windows widgets (in C++), Qt, which has an emulation mode
which is pretty good, and Object Windows from Borland (C++, but it's dead).

Personally, I much prefer GTK+ to anything else, because it's a nice
design, but realistically, only MFC is useful for a port of LyX to
Win32, which would succeed on that platform.  (Qt is too expensive on
Win32.)

If the criteria is to just get LyX running, FLTK would be fine, but
in order to really boost the user base, we would need a real Win32
port, IMO.

As Jean-Marc said, work is underway to achieve a portable frame-work,
where a native Win32 port is realistic.

Disregarding this, the main advantage of FLTK compared to XForms is
of course that it is open source.  However, other than that, there
are not much to gain, and therefore I feel that the time is better
spent with improving the GUI independence so that ports to other
toolkits will become easier.

Greets,

Asger

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