GNU bug report logs - #26180
Remove motif toolkit support

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From: help-debbugs <at> gnu.org (GNU bug Tracking System)
To: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
Subject: bug#26180: closed (Re: bug#26180: Remove motif toolkit support)
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2022 06:53:02 +0000

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Your bug report

#26180: Remove motif toolkit support

which was filed against the emacs package, has been closed.

The explanation is attached below, along with your original report.
If you require more details, please reply to 26180 <at> debbugs.gnu.org.

-- 
26180: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=26180
GNU Bug Tracking System
Contact help-debbugs <at> gnu.org with problems

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From: Po Lu <luangruo <at> yahoo.com>
To: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 26180-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#26180: Remove motif toolkit support
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2022 14:51:39 +0800

Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org> writes:

> Package: emacs
> Version: 25.2
> Severity: wishlist

We agreed to keep Motif support in a discussion last December, so I'm
closing this bug.

I agree with Martin in that there isn't a single concrete case where
Motif interferes with the development of a feature.  Most of the
important code is shared with the Lucid/Athena build, since both
toolkits use Xt, and the toolkit that causes us difficulties is
typically GTK 3.  For instance, it's the only toolkit that has to be
special-cased for frame resize synchronization, since it doesn't behave
well when it doesn't know about the basic frame counter, while the
development of that feature went smoothly on every other build we
currently support.

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From: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
To: submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Remove motif toolkit support
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2017 19:14:31 -0400

Package: emacs
Version: 25.2
Severity: wishlist

I'd like to suggest removing support for the Motif toolkit.

Motivation:
Supporting more toolkits (gtk2, gtk3, lucid, motif, none) makes it
harder to develop relevant low-level features.

The Motif toolkit build of Emacs seems to be very little used:
  - Fedora packages just a Gtk version
  - Debian packages Gtk and Lucid
  - Only ~20 mentions of "motif" on bug-gnu-emacs, ever. Most are just
  comparison testing

(I see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GNU_Emacs mentions it, but my
suspicion is that this is just an attempt at completeness when listing
alternatives to Gtk. Since it's listed first, I wonder if this has
caused more people to use it than otherwise would. All just speculation
on my part.)

(The "none" toolkit is also never used in practice, but I understand it
may be useful as a base/reference.)

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