On Wed, 2006-06-28 at 10:31 +0200, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote: > I think the gtk frontend should only be kept if it manages to become > fully functional. John S., do you still have plans for LyX? Is there > hope?
When I started working on lyx-gtk, it was dead. If nothing had been in CVS at all, I would never have taken it up. If we ever want to attract anyone else to work on the gtk frontend, having it exist is the only way to do that. If we are in fact not interesting in attracting such people to do such work, then what would be the point of having multiple frontends? Of *course* it is planned to have lyx-gtk become fully functional. Otherwise nothing of it would ever have been written. When that's going to happen I'm not sure. I'm learning to program the Cell processor and settling into a new city at the moment, so to say the least now is not a good time. The problem as I see it is that people making changes to the core don't want to have to make corresponding changes to three frontends -- it ties their hands. They're right. I think it's a real drag. It's prevented me from fixing bugs in the controller classes when I found them, because I would have to change all the other frontends at the same time. So, here is what I suggest: if core developers don't want to make the occasional few-line change to keep a frontend working, fine. However, any time a change is made in the qt frontend to accomodate a backend change, this should be dutifully noted somewhere (on the wiki?) so that at some point when someone (probably me) wants to bring the gtk frontend back up to speed, he can. Also, at such times, it should be asked "Why are we having to change a frontend? Why is this not abstracted into a controller class?" If gtk and xforms are eliminated, then only qt remains (I don't care which version, neither do users). At this point, the abstraction of frontends will inevitably decay. There is merit in the argument that having multiple frontends, even if not used, "keeps us honest". Perhaps that could be the right decision, to leave the multi-frontend experiment behind. But if that is the case, it's a decision to be made on its own, it should not happen as a side-effect of trying to reduce maintenance overhead. Executive summary: - If you want to just have one frontend, say so -- don't just imply it by getting rid of the allegedly troublesome others. - If multiple frontends are to be maintained, then even a stalled lyx-gtk is useful for attracting gtk developers, and for maintaining the frontend-independence code. John
