Cross-platform GUI

[Manfred Usselmann]

Bob,

--On Thursday, October 19, 2006 2:18 AM -0700 Bob Hunter 
<catdogbeloved at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> Installing gnucash via DarwinPorts requires space and
> time for compiling the source code of all the required
> libraries. True, the process is guided and automatic,
> but I just cannot afford re-building the world of
> linux under osx just to run gnucash under X11+GTK.

Because you for whatever reason can't build GnuCash on your system with 
a straight forward process you want others to invest a huge amount of 
time to port the app to a different GUI? What then in the end might 
cause different problems for other users?


> Installing gnucash via Fink is more reasonable,
> because the components are distributed in binary form.
>
> Now, looking forward, what I really wanted to ask is,
> a binary distribution of gnucash similar to mozilla
> firefox, that is a single .dmg installer package that
> one can download, run, and thus have a nice icon in
> the Applications folder that you can click on, and
> have a native application running under osx.

Fine, sounds good. To me this looks like you should contact the Fink 
project and find a maintainer there for a GnuCash 2 package.


> I understand that the gap from the present distribution
> to a mozilla-like distribution is huge, but is not
> impossible, as they did it. There are plenty of other
> open-source project that managed to do the same. The
> core difficulty in doing this for gnucash is its GUI,
> because GTK is not a native library of osx, or
> windows.

Why should GTK be a problem? Looking at 
http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/section.php/gnome there seem to be a lot 
of GTK and even Gnome packages in Fink...


> It is also not a native library of linux. My
> recommendation to use xwidgets is far less trivial.
> You kept mentioning qt, but qt cannot be compared to
> xwidgets. xwidgets is a meta-toolkit, that is you can
> choose to compile the application in gtk, qt, or a
> number of other GUI systems, including those of osx
> and windows, with no need to re-write the application.

QT is very much comparable to wxWidgets and supports OS X as well. Both 
could be used equally well. The main difference is that you have to pay 
for QT if you use it for a commercial application. But of course this 
doesn't affect GnuCash.


> In so doing, you could distribute binary versions of
> gnucash with a native GUI for each platform, with no
> need to re-write gnucash.

Binary packages of the current version of GnuCash are already possible 
without any GUI toolkit change. It's just a matter of creating the 
packages for the different distributions. Even a version for windows is 
under development and will become available in the hopefully not too 
far future.


> I strongly encourage you to
> reconsider your long term strategy. I understand that
> there is only 10 of you, but you may consider opening
> a parallel project to port gnucash to xwidgets, and
> simply ask people to get involved. I am sure that, if
> you interact with xwidgets, you will find people who
> are willing to take the port on their shoulders.
> Finally, if your GUI is tightly coupled with the
> financial procedures, I strongly suggest to redesign
> the whole application, separating the core code from
> the GUI. This will make it easier to maintain the core
> application. Further, a cleaner, well structured
> source can only be easier to read, and thus attract
> more developers. gnucash has a great potential, but it
> needs to go the extra mile. Think large. Look forward.

I still don't get it. Why do you want GnuCash to be ported to a 
different GUI if the current one is already available on all the 
platforms you mentioned. To me the time would be much better invested 
if spend on creating binary packages for the diffent platforms and 
distributions. This is something you still would have to do after and 
in addition to the port to wxWidgets...

But of course you are free to start a project for a wxWidgets version 
of GnuCash and see how many developers your project will attract.

Regards,
Manfred