Re: nmf packages

On Thu, 2002-08-15 at 12:23, Nils Faerber wrote:
> Surely GTK2 has its advantages but also disadvantages. We had this
> discussion quite some time ago. IMHO GTK2 is too big for our current
> PDAs. We should still keep the 16MB flash iPaqs and other platforms in
> mind. AFAIK GTK2 will result in about twice as much flash usage as
> GTK1.2. And when I look at my iPaq now with GTK1.2 and an installation
> of just the basic applications and tools I end up with about just 1.5MB
> of flash free. Changing to GTK2 would, roughly estimated, result in 0MB
> free which means no more space for any further improvement or additional
> application.

It's true that GTK2 is rather larger than GTK1 at present. I think
there is definitely scope for making it smaller, though. For example,
we can remove some obsolete and deprecated widgets, e.g:

  69219 160 0 69379 10f03 gtkclist.lo
  52362 100 0 52462 ccee gtkctree.lo
  42267 336 0 42603 a66b gtktext.lo
  23205 96 0 23301 5b05 gtklist.lo

perhaps some that are plain useless:

  30980 344 8196 39520 9a60 gtkfilesel.lo

and some that might be useful but are just too massive to keep:

  257868 128 0 257996 3efcc gtkiconfactory.lo

Converting all apps to GTK2/Xft would also allow us to do away with
around a megabyte of bitmap fonts.

There is also scope for shrinking Xlib itself: it seems to contain quite
a lot of obsolete Unicode and locale-related cruft. In the Familiar 0.7
timeframe it is possible we might be able to switch from the monstrous
glibc to uClibc, which would also save something around a megabyte.
And, finally, there are small but widespread space savings to be made
from using a newer compiler like GCC 3.1. All these things will
mitigate the effect of a larger gtk.

> Yes, I see the point in using GTK2 and I would love to do so.
> But I do not want to scare the users with 16MB iPaqs away.

I sympathise with this up to a point, and indeed my iPAQ is a 16MB
model. I'm running Familiar 0.6 on my unit and with the whole of
gpe-apps installed I have about 1800 blocks free. But I don't think we
should be unduly constrained by trailing edge technology. Users with
small amounts of flash can always install some programs into RAM disk or
external CF card.

> Second is that I would not like to change the toolkit before we even
> have a first release out the door. We are currently all working with
> GTK1.2 and changing this would result in a major delay. I do not really
> see the need for this change right now.

For Familiar 0.6, sticking with the existing GTK 1.2 applications is the
only option: I'm certainly not disputing that. Aside from anything
else, 0.6 doesn't include the new X libraries that you need to get the
best from GTK 2, so there is much less incentive to switch things over.

p.
Received on Thu Aug 15 13:41:44 2002