gnome dependency

[Josh Sled]

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 13:14 +0100, calmar wrote:
> I mean there must be some essential global advantages, isn' it?
> Something gimp can not offer as an example, since it depends on
> gtk only there. So what lacks gimp compared to gnucash as an
> example, beeing enough reason increasing dependencies?
> 
> Or is it encouraging people using gnome, downloading all the
> libraries?

Oh yeah, our real and ultimate goal is really the worldwide spread of
the Gnome libraries through aggressive dependency specification.  This
whole "accounting software" thing is just a red herring... :)


The gnome-specific libraries we depend on are (in Gentoo-ese):

gnome-base/gconf-2.14.0
  - preferences storage

gnome-base/libglade-2.5.1
  - UI building (mostly GTK-related, not necessarily GNOME)

gnome-base/libgnomeprint-2.12.1
gnome-base/libgnomeprintui-2.12.1
  - printing
  
gnome-base/libgnomeui-2.14.1
  - some basic application convenience and desktop integration

gnome-extra/gtkhtml-3.10.2
  - reports, basic HTML rendering

gnome-extra/yelp-2.14.2-r2
  - online help

It looks like the GIMP built out their own help-viewer (gimp-help) and
printing (gimp-print) subsystems.  The gimp's printing requirements are
different from ours; I can understand why they'd not try to re-use an
existing library.

It seems every project has built their own help viewer at one time or
another, though it seems very reasonable to use a shared infrastructure
for it.

I'd like to replace gtkhtml with gecko in the future, but that's just a
dependency trade, really.  But at least it's not a gnome dependency. :)

GConf we could probably do without ... but we'd have to re-write a
gconf-like system, and gconf is already not really tightly tied into
gnome anyways.

Gnome is already working to kill off libgnomeui, so that's just a matter
of time. :)


On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 15:02 +0100, calmar wrote: 
> So, what is the big advantage of the using gnome-libraries. I
> mean there must be some advantages. One advantage is that it
> suits better into the gnome-desktop, so. Are there also
> advantages for not-gnome users? Or what kind of advantages has
> gnu-cash what gimp lacks in that area?

Note as well that this dependency profile is similar to gnumeric,
abiword, epiphany, evolution ... when you write "top of the stack"
user-facing desktop application software, you need the same basic system
services: data storage/preferences (gsf, gconf), printing, common
desktop integration (gtk, glade), rendering (gnomecanvas, gtkhtml,
gstreamer, ...), help-files, high-level IPC (bonobo, orbit, dbus,
dcop) ... the goals of projects like KDE and GNOME are ultimately to
make software simpler and better for both developers and users.

-- 
...jsled
http://asynchronous.org/ - `a=jsled; b=asynchronous.org; echo ${a}@${b}`
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