Re: SWT choice on Eclipse
On Tuesday 10 June 2003 18:52, Jan Schulz wrote:
> * David Goodenough <david.goodenough@btconnect.com> wrote:
> > I recently decided that I needed to move from a hand installed eclipse to
> > a debian installed one. So duly installed it only to discover that I do
> > not seem to have the the choice of using the GTK binding.
>
> In the moment it uses gtk bindings by default and its the only one,
> which is compiled.
I notice that this changed along the life of the Debian package, was there a
reason (none seems to be in the changelog) or just a personal preference?
>
> > I do not run Gnome, and have been running the Motif binding (I would love
> > a KDE binding but license condition still seem to forbid) without
> > problems for a long time.
>
> Its not a gnome binding but only gtk libs. I will add some stuff in
> the readme on the next release with some tips how to get eclipse a
> bit faster (using *no* anti alising is a big leap forward :)).
Sorry, my mistake. It still feels more like a Gnome app than a KDE one,
and more so than the Motif binding does. I get the same problem runing
GnuCash or Xpdf or Gimp or any number of Gtk apps that run perfectly
well under KDE, they just feel and act slightly different.
>
> > Any chance of having a Motif build as well? This should probably
> > make libswt a virtual package, and have two separate packages
> > for libswt-gtk and libswt-motif.
>
> Yes, I thought about this too. There will be some problems, as
> the launcher also uses the same graphic lib, which the swt plugin
> uses (for displaying an error message...). So either this is
> split into a different package with the same virtual packaging
> system or I will go ahead and just replace the launcher with
> a script (its anyway mostly done).
The launcher is a problem, and actually with a bit of work I have
always felt that it could perfectly well be done invoking Java directly
but I never got around to it. Maybe the right answer is a combination
of script and Java.
>
> BTW, there is also a port to FOX, which sounds quite a bit faster
> than gtk, but is still very alpha software :/ Someone else is trying
> to port swt on top of swing...
Yes and I tried to start a KDE binding but got defeated by the license.
>
> > I certainly had no difficulty in building the Motif version, but that was
> > a little while ago (2.0 days).
>
> The problem is not the building (that's mostly one ant and one make
> call), but the way how to handle this two different plugins: They
> can be installed together and you would have to change the -ws
> param, which is passed to the main class. Also the launcher is a
> problem as this program gets a default value at build time, so it
> might happen, that it will start the gtk ws (BTW: Windows system;
> SWT Speech for the underlying toolkit), when only the motiv one
> is installed. I'm not sure, how that could be handled in a
> automatically manner (something in the post install scripts and
> dpkg-reconfigure together with a rc file in /etc?).
>
> I'm not sure about licens issues with open motive bindings.
That is something I had not considered, but I thought it used
Lesstif (which I think is properly open) rather than open motif?
>
> So the problems are:
> * How to handle the two different plugins in a autmatically manner
> * should both packages be made from the same source (would mean
> doubleing the build dependencies and introducing open motif
> dependencies). The alternative would be to use the new SWT drops.
> * Proposing a new virtual package for libswt-java with will be
> provided by libswt-gtk-java and libswt-motif-java (and possible
> future ports). I just read that you need to ask debian-devel to
> 'get' one. Not sure how difficult that is.
I get the impression (but I am no expert) that properly explained
this is not a problem. Through this list many virtual packages
have been introduced for Java itself, as there are many implementations,
and they seemed to get through without great difficulty.
>
> Any comments?
>
> Jan
David
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