[pdftex] xpdf (was: [Gs-devel] Re: [gnu@toad.com: Re: EFF placeholder page for when we have PDF rather than HTML])

[William Adams]

Martin Schroeder quoted Ralph Levien saying:
> When I took over Ghostscript, I tried to get some momentum going for
> better viewers. Unfortunately, the feedback I got back in return was
> overwhelmingly negative. A great many writers felt that committing to
> the Gnome platform (as was my original plan) would be a mistake. From
> this, I have basically concluded that the Linux community is not
> mature enough to deserve a good PostScript/PDF viewer. I'm sure that
> if and when this maturity develops, the viewer will follow shortly.

Although I wasn't a party to this original e-mail exchange, it really
seems to me that unnecessarily binding any development effort to a
particular platform / API (even one under the GPL) limits choice, and
arguably is bad computer science.

LyX's attempt at ``GUI-independence'' strikes me as an excellent example
to follow.
(It was originally done using xforms, then a KDE version was done, and
now the effort is being made to decouple the program from the UI so that
anyone may do a front-end for any environment---anyone wanna do one for
GNUstep?). www.lyx.org for details (see the dev site)

William
(who although saddened by GNUstep's fall from grace (back when it was to
be the premier GUI environment for GNU) is glad to have more choices
now)

--
William Adams, publishing specialist
ATLIS Graphics & Design / 717-731-6707 voice / 717-731-6708 fax
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
http://www.atlis.com