Re: [java-gnome-hackers] a possible merge strategy

[Stefan P. <st...@pr...>]

> > Personally I would like to keep the hand written API, because I see it
> > as a big plus.
> 
> Sure, until you want to use WebKit, Clutter, or GStreamer.

Don't mix things here. Just because there currently is no coverage for
those in java-gnome does not mean that there won't be any. Usually this
only means that no one was interested in these parts enough to have a
look at it. This might change as requests arise.

You have a point when saying that providing an API by means of
auto-generation is faster than hand-writing them. But just generating
the code is not really helping. You need (as you already stated) review
the code. Depending on what your goals are, there can be a lot to be
done.

E.g. we took considerable efforts to come up with an API for TreeView or
TextView which we consider better than that a code generator would
suggest. So even after a code generation there often is a lot of changes
to be made.

This is of course unless the goal is to look more familiar to C
developers than to Java developers.  But personally I don't see the
point to tailor Java bindings for C developers - attracting Java
developers with bindings that behave like they are used to seems to be a
better idea to me.
But as you already pointed out: It is a matter of goals.

> > This might go together with improvements on our GObject code, but that
> > must be discussed with people more familiar with the ugly binding
> > details than me.
> 
> Yes, I would like to discuss that.

Any other people on this list who like to comment here?

> > But I would not go so far to rely on automated
> > generated public APIs using JGIR.
> 
> You may not - but there are a lot of people who would.  Note both
> pygtk and Mono rely on public (after review) autogeneration - and
> there are *way* more pygtk and Mono apps shipped by vendors than
> java-gnome.

Mixing again: Coverage (not the fact if it was auto-generated) may be a
fact that explains that, but we don't know that for sure. It may well be
to other facts like Java programmers preferring Swing or SWT when
writing GUIs or cross plattform Mono applications being developed
because the app developer simply favored .NET instead of Java.

Stefan