Re: [libreoffice-design] UI: Android, GTK+/Qt, and Windows 8

Hi,

> I personally would love to see LibreOffice in native gtk+ :)
> Does anyone know how complicated VCL is? I guess this would also mean a huge code cleanup, maybe 
> making it more attractive to contribute to the project.
> I'd be good if some devs could give a guesstimate how much of this can be achieved during one 
> release cycle, maybe focusing mostly on this issue.

Ha, yeah, I would love to see it as a pure GTK+ app, too. The thing is
just, most of our users are on Windows and the GTK+ situation there is
less than ideal, although things seem okayish for now [1]. In any
case, there will be lots of hiccups with GTK+ on Windows and Mac. If a
big project like LibO were backing the port, though, I could imagine
it working out quite well.
Now, there is another problem: LibO has tons of UI. It is not a small
app with three dialogues, a quick search on OpenGrok reveals around
1000 .src files [2], that doesn't mean there 1000 different programme
windows, but it should be something on that order. Porting all of
these (along with the corresponding "real code") from VCL to GTK+ is
probably not something to be done in one cycle, but as LibO uses git,
a new feature branch might be an option.
Next, we already have tons of unused code that (still) needs to be
cleaned up – deprecating VCL means it will only become a lot more.

Anyway, VCL is not very complicated, but that comes at the price that
it does not offer very much. So, either GTK+ or Qt would afford us
completely new possibilities (fancy UI elements, resizable windows
[this is manually implemented for some windows currently] etc.).


> Lastly, I ask whether LibreOffice plans to become a "tailored app" for
> Windows 8, in which case it would also need to undergo a UI rework.

If anything, it won't go further right now than the quick starter
becoming a live tile :) (if anyone cares about that crappy little
thing).


> P.S. Just out of curiosity, has the no-LGPL restriction of the iOS AppStore
> been resolved? Or will LibreOffice ship with a different license for that
> platform, considering all developers agree?

I believe that as soon as we can release under MPL (will be possible
after importing from AOOo when Oracle's relicensing is finished) that
shouldn't be a problem any more. But please don't nail me on that, I'm
not any kind of license guru.

Astron.


[1] http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2011/11/25/gtk-work-on-windows/
[2] http://opengrok.libreoffice.org/search?q=&project=core&path=src

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