A WYSIWYG HTML editor (as in Writely/Gmail) isn't quote the same as a general WYSIWYG document editor, though. Unix programs, even GUI ones, share a ton of cod

A WYSIWYG HTML editor (as in Writely/Gmail) isn't quote the same as a general WYSIWYG document editor, though. Unix programs, even GUI ones, share a ton of code, as you can easily see if you try to install an interesting GUI application like Shotwell or Digikam. Heck, I've never written an Instant Messenger application, but I know that "libpurple" is the name for the IM component that most Linux chat programs use. And hey, that's exactly how it is advertised: http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple What is libpurple? libpurple is intended to be the core of an IM program. When using libpurple, you'll basically be writing a UI for this core chunk of code. Pidgin is a GTK+ frontend to libpurple, Finch is an ncurses frontend, and Adium is a Cocoa frontend.