[Texmacs-dev] Re: C++'s frustrations

[Abdelrazak Younes]

Henri Lesourd wrote:
> Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
>
> > MSVC is really the defacto standard (KDE, python, LyX, etc all use 
> > it). I don't see the problem here. In any case, I think, but I am not 
> > sure, Borland and Intel compilers are compatible while Mingw's 
> > g++-3.2 is not
>
> Thus there is a problem: we need to go into the
> business of telling plugins implementors which
> tool to use.

No need to tell, just state it on your "plugin development" web page, 
that's all. Choosing a compiler is the job of the plugin developer, not 
yours.

> The problem is that in such a situation, ultimately
> it's the *final user* which will have to deal with
> these issues: he will have a TeXmacs installed,
> download a plugin, and then he will need to be
> able to figure out that this compiler compatibility
> problem *exists* (first), and then figure out how
> he can obtain the address@hidden related info...
>
>
> > especially nowadays where you can have free (as in beer) compiler on 
> > all platforms.
> Free is not the only criterion: not forcing users to
> think about issues they should never have to enter in
> the first place is another important point.
>
> It's the very point M$ understood perfectly, and
> that OSS operating systems repeatedly missed since
> the very beginning, by the way...

So just standardize on one compiler (MSVC on Windows and gcc > 3.3) on 
Unix) and be done with it. I don't think (read I am pretty sure) that 
the user will encounter any problem. And as Josef said, inside TeXmacs, 
you can check the compiler used before loading the plugins and if the 
plugin doesn't match the requirement just display an informative error 
box saying why the plugin cannot be loaded.

Abdel.