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X (Desktop) library obsolescence question

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  X (Desktop) library obsolescence question Jason Nunn <jsno8192@adam.com.au> - 2011-08-13 01:24 -0500
    Re: X (Desktop) library obsolescence question Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> - 2011-08-13 09:10 +0000
      Re: X (Desktop) library obsolescence question Jason Nunn <jsno8192@adam.com.au> - 2011-08-13 06:10 -0500
        Re: X (Desktop) library obsolescence question jt@toerring.de (Jens Thoms Toerring) - 2011-08-13 18:55 +0000
    Re: X (Desktop) library obsolescence question Jasen Betts <jasen@xnet.co.nz> - 2011-08-13 09:18 +0000
      Re: X (Desktop) library obsolescence question Jason Nunn <jsno8192@adam.com.au> - 2011-08-13 06:15 -0500
    Re: X (Desktop) library obsolescence question John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2011-08-13 06:27 -0500

#240 — X (Desktop) library obsolescence question

Hello All

I want to write a simple desktop app that displays my network usage.
I'm now deciding which library to use (GTK, KDE, Qt,OpenGL etc). I have
a question about library obsolescence.

When KDE came out (and the GUI libraries for writing KDE apps), the
authors would do complete GUI function revamps (which was
understandable in it's early days). Your program would require it to be
rewritten every year. I got sick of this after a few years and stopped
using KDE. I haven't returned.

I have written an app about 8 years ago in GTK V2, and I loved
the experience. However, returning to it after a few years, I notived
that V3 is now available, and the functions I want to use are
depreciated by a completely different set that are used and behave
differently.. So as with KDE, the poor old app authors that have
developed V2 GTK apps now have to put in a big development effort to
learn and then make their apps work with future GTK versions.

Is there a X library that has remained unchanged and will remain
unchanged ?. The only one I can think of that remains strong backward
compatibility is OpenGL.

Thanks for any advice :)

J

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#241

On a sunny day (Sat, 13 Aug 2011 01:24:50 -0500) it happened Jason Nunn
<jsno8192@adam.com.au> wrote in
<EICdnYhcEbwvhdvTnZ2dnUVZ_tSdnZ2d@adnap.net.au>:

>Hello All
>
>I want to write a simple desktop app that displays my network usage.
>I'm now deciding which library to use (GTK, KDE, Qt,OpenGL etc). I have
>a question about library obsolescence.
>
>When KDE came out (and the GUI libraries for writing KDE apps), the
>authors would do complete GUI function revamps (which was
>understandable in it's early days). Your program would require it to be
>rewritten every year. I got sick of this after a few years and stopped
>using KDE. I haven't returned.
>
>I have written an app about 8 years ago in GTK V2, and I loved
>the experience. However, returning to it after a few years, I notived
>that V3 is now available, and the functions I want to use are
>depreciated by a completely different set that are used and behave
>differently.. So as with KDE, the poor old app authors that have
>developed V2 GTK apps now have to put in a big development effort to
>learn and then make their apps work with future GTK versions.
>
>Is there a X library that has remained unchanged and will remain
>unchanged ?. The only one I can think of that remains strong backward
>compatibility is OpenGL.
>
>Thanks for any advice :)
>
>J

I have ben using xforms for more than 10 years,
it also has a GUI generator that generates C code.
 http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/xforms/

The lib is very small too, less than 2 MB, and it is extremey fast.

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#243

Hi Jan

Jan Panteltje wrote:
> I have ben using xforms for more than 10 years,
> it also has a GUI generator that generates C code.
>  http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/xforms/
>
> The lib is very small too, less than 2 MB, and it is extremey fast.

Funny you should mention X-forms. I used X-forms for a X/Unix app I
wrote in the mid-90's. I only ever wrote one program using x-forms, but
found the API and form editor very easy to use and the look/feel on
this library was nice.

I might give this library a re-visit I think. I will be interesting to
see if my old x-form app compiles :). Thanks for your feedback :)

J
Adelaide, South Australia

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#246

Jason Nunn <jsno8192@adam.com.au> wrote:
> Jan Panteltje wrote:
> > I have ben using xforms for more than 10 years,
> > it also has a GUI generator that generates C code.
> >  http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/xforms/
> >
> > The lib is very small too, less than 2 MB, and it is extremey fast.

> Funny you should mention X-forms. I used X-forms for a X/Unix app I
> wrote in the mid-90's. I only ever wrote one program using x-forms, but
> found the API and form editor very easy to use and the look/feel on
> this library was nice.

And as a bonus, it's open-source since 2002;-)

> I might give this library a re-visit I think. I will be interesting to
> see if my old x-form app compiles :). Thanks for your feedback :)

If you should have troubles please let me know - I'm one of the
maintainers of XForms and try to keep things backward compatible,
but that's not an option in each and every case. Where you might
run into problems is when you have used undocumented features etc.
The rest of the API has been relatively stable over at least the
last 10 years (just a bunch of functions has been added, those
described as obsolete will remain available for all of the for-
seable future).

BTW, we're planning a 1.2 release (as a direct jump from the cur-
rent 1.0.93 release) for the near future. In case you are inter-
ested to help with testing you might try the current pre-release

http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/xforms/xforms-1.0.94pre5.tar.gz

For documentation (but which you also can build from the sour-
ces) see

http://xforms-toolkit.org/doc/
                                  Best regards, Jens
-- 
  \   Jens Thoms Toerring  ___      jt@toerring.de
   \__________________________      http://toerring.de

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#242

On 2011-08-13, Jason Nunn <jsno8192@adam.com.au> wrote:
>
> Is there a X library that has remained unchanged and will remain
> unchanged ?. 

perhaps xaw. takeup seems to be stalled at version 7.

-- 
⚂⚃ 100% natural

--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to news@netfront.net ---

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#244

Hi Jasen

> perhaps xaw. takeup seems to be stalled at version 7.

Those early X GUI's were fuggy :), but you have a look point.
One of the first X apps I wrote was with Sun's donated openlook library,
which I didn't like, but at the time I thought was better than Athena.

J
Adelaide, South Australia

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#245

Jason Nunn writes:
> Is there a X library that has remained unchanged and will remain
> unchanged ?

Sure.  Xlib.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhasler@newsguy.com
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA

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