Re: [9fans] Re: X Window System

[Kernel Panic <cinap_lenrek@gmx.de>]

app wrote:

>So, if not X, then how about some higher (or eperhaps lower?) layer
>libraries (qtk? Qt? Gecko?) ported so that porting the 10 (or 100)
>best known FOSS packages (whatever they are) would become more
>possible?
>  
>
Go! look at these 100 best known programs... Look at the code and the
dependencies... its not that easy/beauty.

>How about a project to take something like Firefox and restructure the
>whole sw so that best modules would be kept and other modules re-
>implemented /dev/draw way and Rio way?
>  
>
That gets you the same big old programs lunix has... In the end, you dont
port the programs to Plan9 but the other way arround... and then you
are where anything started.

>Or is the real problem really the GUI? Or something else, like the GNU
>toolchain needed to compile a typical FOSS project?
>  
>
No, its not just the GUI.
One of the strongest thinks of Plan9 are the simple and small libraries.
The small code makes it possible for a small comunity to maintain it.
Even a single person can read and understand most of the code.
In contrast to the GNU userland. Here are thousands of programers out 
here to
fix and hack on these zillion-lines-always-changing GNU code. Here are huge
dependency graph for all that stuff. Its mutch work to port, fix, 
maintain...
I doubt a single person/small comunity can do it... And what do you get 
if you are done?
Firefox? Just a webbrowser for all that?
Here is abaco... its very small, fast and has a nice UI. It has 
limitations but why not
improve it then? Its small... you can actually understand and fix the 
code or
ask the author.
Its mutch more fun to make native Plan9 applications. If that gets you 
to implement
some kind of UI(-library) that turns out to be usefull in other programs 
that will
be great.
IMHO... If you are serious with Plan9... eat Plan9 dogfood... start 
using it on
daily basis... see what missing for YOU... start writing your programs 
yourself with
the tools that Plan9 gives you. In many cases... this will result in 
programs
that are mutch more simpler and smaller.
If you do it you will note what Plan9 lacks and maybe provide a solution 
that
further programers can profit of.

cinap