win32 going away

[Lee Roach]

Christopher Stafford wrote:
> It seems like a strange time to consider this when GTK support in
> windows is getting quite solid. In fact I'd go as far as to say that I
> find the windows port to be every bit as good and usable an app as it is
> on linux. I'm sorry that various developers who don't use it on win32
> seem to believe it is deficient in some way.
>   
I agree. From the early days of GTK on win32, things have gotten so much 
better. My only complaint is that GTK needs to be less of a headache to 
natively compile. Pidgin on win32 in comparison to *-pc-linux-gnu, is 
every bit as stable in the right hands, with (IMHO) the only lacking 
area being GTK's numerous trivial bugs.
> If there was a strongly adopted widget set on win32, like GTK on Gnome,
> or whatever the twirly things are on OS/X, then there would be reason to
> have a non-GTK native app, but in fact with the number of skinned
> applications and different toolkits in use, windows is starting to
> appear like a random mash of widget sets where Pidgin fits in just fine.
>   
As one of the vocal win32 minority, I would love to see all the win32 
cruft removed from Pidgin, and a native front end built from scratch for 
us. A native UI would better be able to suit the needs of Windows users, 
and would remove loads of next-to-useless tickets from Pidgin's trac. As 
far as I'm aware, the majority of this list near-unanimously share my 
opinion.

Has anyone started a project for a native libpurple UI?
> I don't know how the developers who are actually putting in the time to
> support windows feel about it but my impression is that the Pidgin (as
> opposed to Purple) windows dev isn't too painful to maintain (although
> it was probably no fun to set up in the first place).
>   
Yeah, mad props to Herman Bloggs, who put in the legwork to get Gaim 
built natively instead of those (horrid) Cygwin-X builds that lacked 1/2 
the features of a decent Linux system. Daniel Atallah took over win32 
maintenance a little ways down, and has done a great deal for us.

--Lee