Re: gEDA: Re: Patches for PCB automake/autoconf system

[Gabriel Paubert <paubert@iram.es>]

On Thu, Oct 21, 2004 at 08:10:03AM -0400, Charles Lepple wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 11:29:46 +0200, Gabriel Paubert <paubert@iram.es> wrote:
> > Besides the run time bloat of Python in some cases. I'm fighting right
> > now with somebody who wants me to rewrite something which works and
> > occupies (after compilation) 8kbytes (code+data in the executable) with
> > a Python script which just after loading the libaries (before adding a
> > single line of code of my own) already takes up 6-7Mb, and he wants to
> > use an XML parser on top of that (it's buzzword compliant for sure) which
> > will take an additional unknown amount of RAM to run. BTW this has to run
> > on a diskless machine with 16Mb of RAM...
> 
> *sigh*
> 
>  the phrases "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and "right tool for the
> job" come to mind...

Right, but we have to upgrade it anyway for what a new generation
(we are getting rid of the VAXes and guess what ... TMS9900 in other
parts of the system). So in some sense it is broke.

I'm fighting a "one size fits all" philosophy, where this means
Python+XML, even at the cost of 3 orders of magnitude in memory 
footprint! 

It just shows that "one size fits all" is the exact opposite of 
"use the right tool for the job".

> 
> On the other hand,
>  
> > I just can't stand a single line of automatically
> > generated code in my programs.
> 
> You don't have to use glade-generated code.  Have you looked at
> libglade? It interprets the glade XML file to create the widgets, and
> you specify your callbacks in the XML file.

Well, I did not know about libglade, will have a look.

> 
> I know what you're thinking: "interpreted? in a performance-critical
> application?" Think about what libglade is doing: it is essentially
> one-time initialization of GUI-related structures. If you're
> constantly creating and destroying windows, you're doing something
> wrong.

I know, and I only create graphical objects at startup (except for the
expose events on a DrawingArea since it is a essentially a virtual 
instrument, spectrum analyser to be exact, and that's the only place 
where the performance is a bit critical if you want something reasonably 
responsive when changing the settings). I've found that I feel more at home 
using C++/Gtkmm to create the widgets, so why use something else?

	Regards,
	Gabriel


> 
> In fact, it's not that hard to get used to glade if you've ever done
> any Win32 coding with Visual Studio's resource editor. (I'm sure there
> are more of you out there than are willing to admit in public...)
> 
> Congrats to Stuart for recognizing that an installer is a good fit for
> an interpreted language and a rapid GUI development framework.
> 
> -- 
> - Charles Lepple