Re: Motif APIs
> I lived the wars of News versus X11 and OpenLook versus Motif back
> in the last 1980s and early 1990s. However, the GUI wars of the new
> millennium between GTK, Qt, and Motif is a distinct possibility.
>
> Will the LSB specification include multiple GUI widget sets &
> toolkits, not have any mention of GUIs, or include at least one?
Look at the LSB specification as a set of APIs (libraries in this case)
provided by LSB-compliant distributions that may be used by third-party
applications. If we include GUI toolkit A and leave out GUI tooklit B,
it would not mean that applications could not use toolkit B, but that
applications would have to statically link against it or provide their
own set of dynamic libraries.
We would have to be very careful about pointing this out if we decided
to include any GUI toolkits.
Our current plan (which could be changed) is to only mention toolkits
provided by XFree86. I think we would be most likely to include a GUI
toolkit in the LSB specification if:
- there was a stable open standard (best if the standard is available
for free or on the web)
- there was an open source(1) implementation (LGPL okay, GPL not. Qt
2.0 probably okay, Qt 1.0 not.)
- there was an open source test suite
- the Linux community was behind the toolkit
Any relevant standards adopted by both camps (KDE and GNOME) are also
good candidates for inclusion.
> If Motif were open sourced by TOG, then would it be a candidate for
> the LSB specification? What about LessTif as a substitute?
Perhaps, although the Linux market seems to be headed away from Motif
and towards either GTK or Qt. LessTif wasn't ready last time I checked.
- Dan
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