Dear Developers,
Let me start by saying that I use LyX every day and think it's one of
the
best things that came out of the open source community. I send this mail
as a concerned user.
Glancing over the developers mailing list archive I happened to see a
small thread concerning a mail from Matthias Ettrich (ME).
I thought that he raised many valid points. There were some defensive
comments from John Levon (whom I praise for his effort on the KDE port)
and that was it.
I would like to see some reflexion from the developers on these issues.
It would be great to:
-have the best possible LyX
-avoid duplication of effort
-get a native MS Windows port
It seems to me that Qt2 is best suited to reach these goals.
Qt2 is a high quality toolkit that falls under the GPL.
As ME mentioned a Qt2 port would offer the possibility for a native MS
Windows port. The importance of this cannot be stressed enough. I think
that a windows port will make LyX the standard document processor for
many people. Whither scientific workplace. Finally, I can send my *.lyx
files to my collegues.
I hope that you took up his offer: "I'm sure my company can provide you
with the necessary number of Qt licenses for MS-Windows."
A Qt2 port would only require installing Qt for LyX, just like we
install
xforms for LyX.
Why not kde1? It is a small effort to install Qt2, and by the time you
have finished many people will have Qt2 or KDE2 installed anyway. And
then you will have to start over again porting to Qt2.
Why not xforms? I fail to see why you put effort in creating a GUII
Xforms port. As far as I can see the xforms version of LyX will become
obsolent once there are kde or gnome ports available. It seems like a
waste of time.
Why not gnome? We want a MS Windows port.
I can't stress enough that you should realize that the work done to make
LyX GUII are largely SUNK costs.
Avoid forking.
Keep up the good work.
Warmest regards,
Edwin.
(whose desktop is IceWM, and who uses lyx, gnumeric, kmail and netscape)
