[Portland] What exactly does DAPI cover?

[Karol Pietrzak]

On Thursday 06 April 2006 07:51, Martin Olsson wrote:
> Hello,
>
> After downloading DAPI I kind of got the feeling that it could be used
> only for a few specific tasks like opening a browser, getting an address
> book entry etc. But I mean, typically an app needs to do a whole lot more
> than that?

Yes, you're absolutely right.

> Won't ISVs still have to choose either KDE/QT or Gnome/GTK for
> development? Or will DAPI later wrap _all_ GUI widgets somehow so that an
> application can be compiled into both "native KDE" and "native Gnome" or,
> like, ehm.. how does this DAPI thing work?

I'm not a Portland developer, a developer nonetheless, and you're right: ISVs 
still have to pick KDE/QT or Gnome/GTK.  There is no wrapper around Qt and 
GTK, nor are there current plans for once as far as I know.  With hundreds of 
widgets provided by each library, it would be quite a task indeed.

Of course, I'm sure it could be done.  After all, the Eclipse folks wrapped at 
least Win32, GTK, and Motif under SWT.

What are you thinking?  That a software package would have both GTK and Qt 
versions, and the choice of which to install and run is determined at 
runtime?

As for your comment that typically an application does more than just open a 
URL, etc.  I think another, just as big issue, is the inconsistency between 
Linux distributions.  One may use CUPS as the printing subsystem, another may 
use LPRng.  Hell, another distribution might use both.  Some distributions 
may use /usr/man as the man page directory, others /usr/share/man.  Most 
Linux distributions use the init scripts for startup, but "standardizing" on 
init scripts prohibits innovations such as launchd on Linux.

In other words, there needs to be a wrapper for everything:
- open a URL
- get me all available printers
- what's the man page directory?
- is this window manager XDG compliant?
- install this .desktop file for use for all WMs on this system

I actually started a little work on this not too long ago at 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ldw.  Once I have more time I hope to return 
to it.  I plan on using the DAPI, and extending it, so to speak.  Anyone 
interested in my "quest"?

The DAPI developers will have better DAPI-specific answers for you, though.

-- 
Karl Pietrzak
kap4020 at rit.edu
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