Why enlightenment?

[Bram Neijt]

This looks like a great list! I'll go through the points one by one...

On Sat, 2009-04-18 at 01:03 +0200, Leonti Bielski wrote:
> Enlightenment is the best choice for Freerunner!
> 
> 1. Theming - it keeps resources low and alows us to do everything we
> want with GUI! Take shelf widgets as an example - you can change their
> look, even functions - like digital clock instead of analog - without
> changin the main code. I don't say it's not possible with GTK but it
> way more complicated.
I'll have to look into how complicated this would be with GTK, but I'll
take your word for it. However, if you change the clock from digital to
analog, then you will get layout problems. I thought switching
glade(/gtkbuilder) files would be perfect for something like that and
with the glade interface developer, making new layouts would be easy for
everybody.

I'll take your word for it that is really is easier.

> 2. Finger scrolling - it works by default. If I know that app is
> written in Elementary - I know that it's finger-friendly. Also -
> compare matchbox keyboard and illume one - latter is far more
> finger-friendly.
I really thought finger scrolling would be a task that should be
implemented by the touchscreen driver/library software, or if needed the
window manager, but not the GUI toolkit. What about right-clicking
support? If you put right-clicking support, scrolling, and other
"emulate a normal mouse" behavior in the GUI toolkit, I think you are
putting it in the wrong place.

If you think about it like that, then finger friendly means: large
buttons, nothing where you have to hit the side, and feedback you can
see even with your finger on it.

But if the OpenMoko team thinks that the GUI toolkit is the place to fix
scrolling, then I can see why it is a good choice.

> 
> 3. Up-to-date. It's under constant development, and getting better by
> the day. It's also (Illume and elementary) is well adjusted to phone.
Being under constant development is something I don't like about the
toolkit. With the little number of developers that there are for things
like this, I would consider it a problem because the apps already
written get old sooner.

Point 1 and 2 I can understand now. As for point 3, I can't really see
how that is a benefit.

Thank you very much for writing this mail as I can finally get some
insight into why that choice has been made and why it seems so
ridiculous to me. 

Bram