[Fresco-devel] Re: Fresco development

Paul Kahler wrote:

>   I think Fresco is a great idea. I'd like to see it replace X, if for
> no other reason than the fact that X is not LGPLed. I may want to
> contribute to the project in the future, but I can't see anything short
> of a very deep dive making much progress. So I need to complete a few
> things first. Questions for you:
> 
> 1) How hard would it be to create a Windoze build of the server? I have
> 2 machines and only one runs linux. Recall that there is an SDL for
> windows and Fresco could use that. Networking may be an issue here - I'm
> not a networking software kind of guy.

Porting to windows shouldn't be *that* hard. The main blocks are

* an ORB (omniORB already runs on windows)
* a console library (as you say, SDL runs on windows)
* Prague, fresco's own system level wrapper library (no idea how hard it
   would be, there are some touchy things like threading, tty / ipc,
   etc.)

All the rest should compile without problems, so if you get the above
up and running, you are almost done.

> 2) How hard would it really be to get GTK working with Fresco? and
> would this actually allow wholesale switching to Fresco provided you
> only run GNome software?

I don't know. Only the most simple applications rely on GTK alone, most
will make direct calls to GDK and even X, but it of course depends on
the actual application.

There are different ideas about how to port applications, i.e. at what
level of granularity (i.e. widget level or rendering level, to mention
just the two most extreme)

> 3) What kind of documentation is available on GTK and Fresco to help #2
> ?

if you mean documentation demonstrating how to 'bin' GTK apps to Fresco,
none.

> 4) Would it be necessary to work out that WidgetKit thing first? How
> much progress has been made in that area?

yes, quite a number of common widgets are missing. Writing them
shouldn't be that hard. It's just that we are busy with other, more
basic, stuff, such as text processing, or focus / event handling.

> That's about it for now. I'm an old graphics guy, but widgets and X
> windows are something I've never really felt the need to mess with. The
> goal of replacing X with something up to date really appeals to me
> though.

Regards,
		Stefan