NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/gnu/emacs/help/3979

Internet Message Format | 1992-09-02 | 3.5 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!corton!laas!felix
From: [e-mail] (Francois Felix INGRAND)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
Subject: Re: the Motif black hole (was: Adding figures handling to the Info format.)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 3 Sep 92 09:23:31 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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Organization: LAAS-CNRS France
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In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of 1 Sep 92 10:16:18 GMT

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Richard Stallman) writes:
   From: [e-mail] (Richard Stallman)
   Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
   Date: 1 Sep 92 10:16:18 GMT
   Organization: Gatewayed from the GNU Project mailing list [e-mail]

I guess I knew that RMS was going to catch the "M" word in my posting,
nevertheless, I have a couple of comments to make on this Motif issue.

   No matter how useful a program may be, it contributes nothing to the
   GNU project if it requires Motif in order to run.  Unless/until
   someone writes a free Motif implementation, such a program simply
   can't run on a GNU system.

In term of contributions, I do not agree. Keep in mind that 90% of a Motif
application is X/Xt code, not Motif. In fact the Motif Xinfo widget I wrote was
inspired by the Athena Xinfo widget written by Jordan Hubbard. It took me a
day to switch from Athena to Motif, and most of the code is "widget set"
independent. I did not have to change much to the code which parse, traverse,
etc, the info structure, and if I was to add some picture handling in the Motif
version, it would be certainly easy to incorporate these changes in the Athena
version... So all in all, most of the work would still be beneficial to GNU.

(Note that the Motif Xinfo widget is, as was the Athena version, under the GNU
copyright).

   If you have written a program that requires Motif, please don't ask
   other people to help work on it.  If other people do help, they too
   will fall into the Motif black hole, where their efforts add nothing
   to the GNU system.  Please don't lead other people down this path.

As I said, most of the code can still be easily ported to Athena... and
considering the overall issue of pictures in Info files, I guess that the Motif
problem is quite remote. After all, most of the modifications will have to be
done in the TeXinfo/LaTeXinfo code, and in the "widget set" independent part of
the Xinfo widget...

   I have some ideas for how to support pictures within Info files (and,
   more generally, in any files for Emacs to display).  I can write them
   down if someone is seriously interested in working on such a project
   for Emacs.

I am certainly interested by your comments and idea. However, I get the feeling
that you have a bigger picture in mind that the one I have. I am not saying
that I just want to make a quick and dirty hack, but I think that such
extension to the info mode should make an heavy use of already existing PD
picture/image displayer/viewer.

OK, so if I repost my original article after doing a
"<Meta>%Motif<return>Athena<return>!" which response do I get?
--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Francois Felix INGRAND                   "Read my Lisp... No new syntax" (nil)
LAAS/CNRS: [e-mail]      "La guerre, qu'on voit danser le long des golfes
ACS Technologies                     clairs, a des reflets d'argent" (Anonyme)