NeXT-style encap (was RE: Windows and DLLs)

[Tim Moore <tmoore tembel org>]

On Thu, 1 Oct 1998, Dries, Joseph wrote:

> > In addition, Gnome is also intended to widen the Linux applications
> > base by providing a standard desktop environment for developers to
> > write for. If this application based does widen sufficiently, we are
> > going to start to run into the same kinds of problems that other
> > mainstream systems with lots of applications (namely Windows) run
> > into. Discussing these issues before Gnome has finalized how
> > everything works, while it's early enough to do something about it
> > where possible, is crucial.
> > 
> 	If you s/Linux/UNIX/g I would agree, as long as you work within the
> existing infrastructure of all target UNIX OS's. This kind of lends itself
> to a similar solution that NeXTstep implemented, which is the
> app-wrapper/encap that keeps being bandied about the list much to
> Frederico's disdain.

There seems to be a growing consensus here about app-wrappers, and David
Jeske and I have been talking fairly extensively in the past week about
implementation. He's drafting a proposal.

Federico, do you really object to this? What don't you like about it? I
was intitially somewhat opposed to the idea, but David convinced me of its
merits. I want to make sure that all of the objections get addressed in
the proposal.

Tim

P.S. This is particularly unfortunate, since I was thinking that the GNOME
Calendar would be a good app to try the encap system out with. I was
hoping we'd have Federico's blessing. :-(