Re: Random comments

[John A Eikenberry]

On Mon, 23 Jun 1997, Benedikt Stefansson wrote:

> I'm also sure that ungluing Swarm from Tk/Tcl and integrating it with a
> Java GUI is a crucial step in keeping the platform viable. It is great
> to be able to tell people that by this time next year Swarm could be
> running on practically any PC (under NT,Unix or the MacOS). The next
> logical step should not be to hard, i.e. to turn Swarm into a true
> client/server environment.

Reading this thread about the Java GUI porting of swarm got me thinking.
If the only reasons for switching to Java for the GUI is cross platform
support, why is the switch necessary? I mean Tk is probably one of the
better cross platform GUI development environs. It runs (with native look)
on Unix, MacOS and Windows NT/95. 

It just seems to me that it would be easier to keep Tk for the interface
and just work on making the other libs (blt,libtclobjc) more integrated
with swarm. You could simply start including libtclobjc with the swarm
dist (have it build as part of the swarm build) and either do the same
with blt or reimplement the blt stuff in tcl and include that.  This would
make it both easier to install and get going (even easier than the java
port would be, as tcl/tk is much easier to install than the JDK is) and
less system dependent. 

Am I missing something or what?

John Eikenberry
address@hidden - http://www.ai.uga.edu/students/jae/]
______________________________________________________________
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order
 will deserve neither and lose both."
                                         --B. Franklin



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