bzr-mac team mailing list archive

[Martin Pilkington <pilky@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The problem with all the qbzr stuff is how bloody annoying and awkward  
it is to get going. You have to download QT which is a 132MB download.  
Then it seems SIP which you need to install from the command line,  
then PyQT (another 6.6MB) which is another command line install (which  
I haven't yet been able to install due to errors whenever I try). So  
that's about 140MB over 3 downloads and 2 command line installs, and  
all that's just to get the application to run. That is going to put  
most Mac users off. A native client on the other hand could be <  
5-10MB download, drag & drop install and basically "Just Works"™.

Now I haven't been able to try Explorer because I can't get PyQT  
working. However, if it is anything like almost every other cross  
platform app then it is going to need a lot of work to make native.  
Being native isn't just looks but most importantly in function. It's  
easy to make a text field look like a Cocoa text field for example,  
but it's hard to implement all the emacs keybindings that all Cocoa  
text fields support, as well as things such as spell checking. I know  
QT has been working on a version that wraps around Cocoa, but whether  
you get that free just by running on the Mac I don't know.

As for the consistency across OS's, I think that depends on the user.  
I'm writing BazaarX because I want a native client that conforms to  
all Mac conventions, all the way from install to use. It will take a  
while to get up to the level of something like Explorer, but it does  
benefit from using a native toolkit and only having to support 1  
platform which can speed up development. That said it is currently a  
background project that I work on from when I have spare time from the  
apps that bring in the money.

Martin

On 29 Sep 2009, at 2:11 pm, John Arbash Meinel wrote:
> I honestly think that long-term having a OS specific GUI for Mac is a
> great idea. I don't think anyone writing that will be able to
> reimplement all of qannotate, qlog, qbrowse, etc, in a reasonable  
> amount
> of time versus leveraging all the work that is already out there.
>
> It is possible that it is just a 'glue' that is needed, plus a bit of
> work to refactor the dialogs to be glued together more cleanly for  
> Mac.
> (A dialog may be making assumptions about its menu that should be
> changed, etc.)
>
> Anyway, I'm happy to support people who want to make BazaarX, etc
> better. I think that with limited resources, focusing on getting  
> Bazaar
> Explorer to be better on Mac is a better use of time.
>
> For *me*, I switched to using Firefox & Thunderbird precisely because
> when I switch from Windows to Mac to Linux it still works and looks  
> like
> what I'm used to. And having consistency *across* OS's was far better
> than having consistency *with* the OS. I fully understand the other
> side, though, where you are immersed in a single OS and what local  
> apps
> to all work together.