[Thunar-dev] Help needed?

[Benedikt Meurer]

Bernhard Jantscher wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> My name is Bernhard Jantscher, I've read the latest posts about the
> Thunar implementation. When talking about C, do you actually mean C++
> (together with XFC)? 
> When considering Python, wouldn't you have a problem with integrating
> Thunar into XFCE, or are there already Python bindings existing for XFC?
> Of course, the file manager could also exist outside this framework, but
> wouldn't it be useful (for some purposes) to be able to "interact" with
> features provided by XFC?
> Actually I'm not familiar with this library, but I guess it's not bad
> for desktop applications like a file manager, to resort to a common
> framework...

Well, there can be bindings to C++ at a later time (actually as part of 
general plugin framework), just like bindings to Java and Python. We 
could also write the upper layers of the file manager in a high-level 
language, that's open for discussion. But for the lower and middle 
layers, it'll be C, because bindings tend to limit the functionality 
somehow, which involves unneccesary work-arounds (e.g. the Java bindings 
don't allow custom implementations of the gtk.TreeModel interface, and I 
know most of the other Gtk+ bindings have similar limitations).

Of course the core could be written using C++ and the C API to 
GObject/Gtk+. But that won't buy us much IMHO, as you would use C++ as 
"better C" here, without using the benefits of C++.

So, to conclude: The core will be written in C. The upper layers and/or 
the plugins (later) can be written in Java, C++ or Python. I do not 
include Perl here, because I don't think it's the right tool for the 
job. If somebody feels like a Perl interface is required, he/she can add 
it later for him/herself.

> Berni

greets,
Benedikt

-- 
Xfce  --  small, stable, fast  --  http://www.xfce.org/

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