mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Ingolf Schäfer <address@hidden>]

On Sat, 21 Jan 2006 05:29:28 +0100, Venkat Bhamidipati  
<address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Fri, 2006-01-20 at 12:19 +0200, Peter Jung wrote:
> > To really attract a lot of mac users one ultimately would need a
> > native port. I am currently considering this possibility. But I am
> > not an experienced cocoa-developer, either.
>
> I have some questions about the Mac native GUI port:
>   - Would it use Carbon or Cocoa - what would be preferable?

Preferable would of cause be Cocoa, because this would be portable to  
GNUstep and is the *REAL* native api for Mac OS X. By the way Cocoa and  
Carbon support direct PDF / PS drawings via Quartz, which might be very  
helpful.

>   - I was reading some earlier discussions in the archives about the
> porting to cross platform toolkits like QT/WX - what are the thoughts
> about porting TeXmacs to QT (or any other cross platform toolkit)?

I think it is definitely possible and should be considerded, but I would  
suggest to work in a different direction. I think we should not try to  
port to QT/WX /GTK/... but we should aim to use cairo instead of direct  
X11 calls. This would make TeXmacs easier to port and would also be an  
enrichment to TeXmacs.

>   - I was looking at the code for Win32 native port - for the Mac port,
> are we going to similarly define wrapper XLib as a wrapper over
> Carbon/Cocoa calls?

I do not think this is possible in Cocoa and it is even not desireable.  
The GUI should be redesigned to give not only the look but also the feel  
of a Cocoa appliaction.

With Carbon this is certainly possible. There are numerous examples like  
Mozilla, Emacs, etc. where things where done this way. But I know very  
little about Carbon.

> If someone explains to me how we plan to do the GUI port, I am willing
> to spend some time experimenting.

I am also willing to help.

Just my two cents,

Ingolf
> Regards,
>
> Venkat



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