Re: Platform Independent vs. Platform Specific Behavior (was: Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?)

2011/4/28 Kohei Yoshida <kyoshida@novell.com>:
> On Thu, 2011-04-28 at 10:49 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote:
> > One thing that we may wish to look into is using the same concept as the
> > Chromium project does - pulling colors in from the user's native desktop
> > environment, but not necessarily using those widgets.  This will give
> > LibreOffice the ability to render its own layout and even graphics options,
> > but it will render them in a manner that allows for much better desktop
> > integration without completely rejecting using our own layout/widget
> > concepts...
>
> FYI, that's precisely what we do today.  We do pull colors from the
> native desktop, and we do even render widgets using native calls, but do
> our own layouting, which isn't all that great and doesn't make the app
> feel and behave like a native app (IMO).
>
> Kohei
>
> --
> Kohei Yoshida, LibreOffice hacker, Calc
> <kyoshida@novell.com>

Indeed. Correct me if I'm wrong (my technical background in not deep
enough) but I think the problem is that OOo/LibO is using some archaic
(and arcane) set of libraries to draw its UI called VCL, that no one
else use. As a matter of fact, OOo/LibO is NOT a GTK app, but a VCL
app that can connect to GTK or Qt libraries through "VCL plugins".(1)
Switching to a more modern set of libraries will easy the task of
desktop integration preserving at the same time its own layout.
But as always, writing the word "switching" is a lot easier that the
switch itself.

(1) Chakra project recently published a LibO version 100% GTK free:
http://chakra-project.org/news/index.php?/archives/175-LibreOffice-available-for-testing-Be-free.html

Cheers
Ricardo

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