Clean is loosing portability in favour of Windows :(

[Antonio Eduardo Costa Pereira]

 > BTW. if some difficulties are the result of incompatibilities between
> graphical APIs of different systems, there is always a portable way,
> or rather ways: pass through an intermediate layer.
>
> DrScheme uses WX and it became the most portable Scheme in the world,
> including interfacing etc.
>
> Chez Scheme (including Petite) is augmented by a graphical layer
> based on Tcl/Tk. Works everywhere.
>
> I believe that even the 3D graphics is quite easy and portable, if
> one really wishes. It suffices to plug-in the deep kernel of
> OpenGL (Mesa or native). Very portable. (You don't need GLUT etc.,
> Clean would provide the interfacing layer.)
> Those things seem to be (for me) a bit more important both for the
> commercial success of Clean, and for the development of the
> "functional spirit" within the computing community, than, say -
> implementing this or that language under Native Oberon, or other
> exotic systems.

I guess you are right. Better: I am sure that you are right.
I like Native Oberon, but I am convinced that
it has but little chance. It just did not catch people's interest.
What I vented was just a far fetched wish, that has scanty chance
of becoming true for two reasons: Oberon team seems to be language
bigots. They do not welcome any language into their system, but
Oberon. The system, the applications, everything is written in Oberon.
Besides this, Clean team would never spend time with an OS whose
active users number less than 300000 platforms (if everibody who
downloaded the system installed it, which is likely, since it is very easy
to install and requires very little resources).

> You mention openwin. Mon Dieu, who really cares? Even Solaris users
> don't use openwin all of them. KDE is as good as CDE.
> Actually, had I a bit more time, I would start constructing a portable
> GUI for Clean adapted to X Window system *especially* for the
> portability. Running it under Windows is very simple, there are free
> servers around, and the development tools adapted to CYGWIN are
> fairly portable.

However, if I understand it, Clean team supports only openwin.
I mean, their GUI requires openwin. Of course, I have seen applications
written in Clean, that use other interfaces, via C. Since these applications
do not keep with the spirit of the language (no side effect), I do not
think they show the way to go. Finally, I suppose that we agree on
this: Clean team should move from openwin to another thing, like KDE
(or whatever. I do not know very well the architecture of Linux,
or Windows). Let's wait for the opinion of someone belonging to the team.

> 2. This is a veeery dubious statement (to say it mildly). Of course,
>    if "user friendly" means
>    "friendly for the most incredibly stupid and lazy people around"
>    then this is true. But Linux is for *thinking* people. And I believe
>    that Clean is also for people who think.

They are not exactly lazy. They just do not have the technical knowledge
to do things like installing tools, recompíling kernels, downloading
libraries. Most of people who use computers are secretaries doing
typing, writers, office  people, factory workers, etc. What Scientific
American says is that Linux should comtemplate the necessities of
these persons.

Eduardo Costa.