Re: [Gnash-dev] multiple GUIs

[Rob Savoye]

strk wrote:

> I'd name them gtk-gnash, sdl-gnash, fb-gnash etc. etc.

  Actually at one point I thought about having Gnash (GTK) slash (SDL),
klash (KDE), and and flak (FLTK), but I think that's too confusing for
end users. Most people are going to be just installing "gnash", and
expect it to work as a plugin for Firefox or Konqueror. With this latest
change I think we should probably rename "klash" to also being just
"gnash" if we keep this behavior.

 There is something to be said for building both the KDE and the GTK
plugins though, as anyone building Gnash for a BSD or GNU/Linux
distribution will likely have to supply both since users may choose KDE
or GNOME at install time. It would be difficult, I think, to force a
distribution to build two versions of Gnash, which is what they'll have
to do now. Either that or the Konqueror support has to also work with a
GTK enabled build of gnash.

> The rationale is that sometime you really want two or more
> versions. For example, a framebuffer AND a gtk based gnashes.
> Also, we know that gtk better integrates into the firefox browser,

 I have debated adding the code to load the renderer or the GUI support
(and other things) as a shared library plugin type of architecture, but
not for this release. I may do this in the future though, and also use
it for loading ActionScript classes dynamically. This would let people
write gnash "extensions" that would add functionality to the base
player, as well as reduce the footprint on an embedded device by only
loading what the Flash movie needs. But anyway, this isn't on the
immediate TODO list.

>> My question is: should we adjust the build system to allow for multiple 
>> GUIs to be built? In effect, this means we would have seperate binaries 
>> like Gnash (GTK), Klash (KDE), Slash (SDL), Flash (FLTK), et cetera.

  I'd actually like to see us use the klash that gets built in gui,
instead of plugin/klash. plugin/klash should ideally be only the KDE
"parts" wrappers for the standalone executable.

        - rob -