[mcclim-devel] status of mcclim

[Robert Goldman]

Troels Henriksen wrote:
> Jan Brosius <jan.brosius at skynet.be> writes:
> 
[...]

>> Is there a gtk backend for clx (other than motif)?
> 
> "Gtk backend for CLX" does not make much sense (and McCLIM does not
> have a Motif backend at all, though the commercial CLIMs do). There is
> an experimental backend named "Gtkairo" that blends use of Gtk and
> Cairo, but it is not yet as stable or full-featured as the CLX
> backend. It may work for your programs, depending on what you want to
> do. In general, the drawing primitives work very well with it, but the
> more obscure CLIM facilities are less well supported.
> 
>> Is mcclim in alpha stage?
> 
> There is no defined stage. Strictly, it is not feature-complete as a
> CLIM implementation (but pretty close), so it would not be appropriate
> to call it a beta. On the other hand, while McCLIM is no rock pillar
> of stability, it is certainly not as unstable as "alpha" might imply.
> 
> 

I think it's difficult to answer this because there is a wide variation
in how solid different parts of the system might be.  If you use parts
of the system that you see in use in existing McCLIM applications, you
may find it very solid.  However, if you unwittingly start using a
feature of CLIM that is not used so much in these areas, you may find it
incomplete or buggy.  To my great sorrow, the last time I was using
McCLIM much, I seemed to have a perfect gift for finding the parts of
the spec that were not much exercised.  At that time, for example,
format-graph-from-roots was really only working for trees, and there
were serious problems with accepting values for commands with multiple
arguments.  I have not had an opportunity to use McCLIM in the
intervening time, so I don't know the extent to which these areas have
improved...

I think that Troels' response wrt gtkairo shows the same dynamic.

I am sorry not to be more helpful,


r