Re: gEDA: SPICE GUI

[Svenn Are Bjerkem <svenn@bjerkem.de>]

On Friday 13 August 2004 20:34, John Griessen wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-08-11 at 15:03, Dale E Martin wrote:
>
> "but let me say again that QT
> is not GPL under Windows, so I would not argue that QT is the best choice
> here for everyone. "

As the windows platform is not a usual platform for open source, it is nice 
that geda can compile on windows, but I don't see that it should be a killer 
criteria for not using qt. The killer criteria is that geda is written in gtk 
and that that will not change unless somebody port geda to qt. And why do 
that when geda run perfectly under gtk?

>
> [jg]If the linux source is GPL, and windows QT is not, does that mean QT
> has a windowing layer that is separately licensed?   Can QT be compiled so
> its generated windows are handled by wxwindows or GTK?   Is that what
> someone meant when they said  QT maps onto GTK, but is ugly that way?

I understand that you want to run geda on a pc, preferrably under qt because 
qt is a nicer toolkit for c++ programmers. But why not accept that geda is 
gtk and learn gtk? The only true cross platform language is java, but if you 
want to be truly cross platform, your java code will also need to have 
special parts for each windowing system. 


As an example Electric was mentioned. It is now moving to java. Staticfreesoft 
has taken the hassle to start the porting even if they have a qt version. Qt 
is GPL on linux and MacOS X. Somebody could buy the Qt/win license and sell 
the compiled program for donations. (Maybe your bank won't finance this idea 
though) I would donate an euro or five if I wouldn't have to take the hassle 
to compile geda every time a new snapshot shows up.. It is a pain because of 
all the dependencies on other libraries, and Windows has the nicest install 
feature next to Apple.

But, generally said, gtk 2.0 does not look that much worse than qt taken into 
consideration that qt is a commercial product and gtk is open source. If it 
runs on all major platforms and stay free then stick with it. 
-- 
Svenn