Subject: Re: Framebuffer version of Abi ?
From: Tom Ryan (tomr@scitechsoft.com)
Date: Fri Mar 10 2000 - 13:50:33 CST
On 10 Mar 00, at 10:50, Paul Rohr wrote:
> Are any of your technical folks
> interested in this discussion, or is this still a marketing function
> for your company?
Don't know what you mean exactly by that comment. Marketing
people (and CEOs, for that matter) can be technical too. I have a
BS in Computer Science (as well as a BS in Finance and a BA in
Economics) and have been developing computer products
commercially for over 12 years. Is that technical enough?
> Please do. I'd love to see more toolkit vendors doing work like this,
> since it provides an *excellent* proof of how usable the toolkit is in
> real-world situations.
What do you mean by "real-world situations? Is the Space Shuttle
real? The Mir Space Station? WinQuake? Tons of other computer
games? Video Slot Machines? X ray Scanners? Concert Lighting
Systems? All these and hundreds more use SciTech MGL. That is
pretty real world by me.
> I disagree. The rate of progress of AbiWord development is, pure and
> simple, a function of the number of talented developers adding code.
> Almost *all* of that work gets done in XP code, and we've found that
> doing any platform-specific work is quite easy.
To me, *any* time spent on "one off" porting is time that could
better be spent elsewhere on improving the product or improving
the XP library for the benefit of all. Porting things one application at
a time is not very efficient and poses a major barrier to real
competition and innovation in operating system platforms. It's not
just about AbiWord -- it's about the Big Picture.
> Getting a feature done thoroughly and done right is what takes most of
> the time. Once that happens, ports to each platform can happen in a
> matter of hours.
I guess it depends on how you define a port. From what I can tell
on this mailing list, many of the ports are not up to the same level
of functionality (read: they're not done) and considerable effort is
needs to be expended to keep things up to date (dialogs seem like
a great example of this).
I don't know why you are so militant in your defense of AbiWord's
"one off" porting mechanism. Clearly your company can see the
benefits of using a more general XP library like wxWindows
because you are supporting the wxWindows effort and are in fact
using it in the development of other SourceGear products.
If there was a wxWindows port of AbiWord, I think it would be a
good thing for AbiWord, for wxWindows and for the industry as a
whole, since we can all be solving the same problems together,
instead of fragmenting our efforts. It will take someone to step up
to the plate to actually do the port, but it should not be
discouraged, but promoted as something that is going to benefit
this effort and others as well.
Regards,
-Tom Ryan
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