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Just a thought

 
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bobef



Joined: 05 Jun 2005
Posts: 269

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 1:26 am    Post subject: Just a thought Reply with quote

Just a thought... If someone is still interested porting DWT to other platforms why instead doing native ports for Windows, MacOS, etc and waste so much time just port the GTK version of SWT? I believe GTK is available for all the major platforms or even if not the guys developing GTK seem very active...
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PsychoBrat



Joined: 23 Jul 2005
Posts: 22

PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 6:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd think this would remove many of the benefits of DWT (native widgets et al.); if only the GTK version were available, why not just use/develop a more direct GTK wrapper?
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JJR



Joined: 22 Feb 2004
Posts: 1104

PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 11:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

bobef, I think implementing a DWT version using a GTK backend for win32 (or Mac OSX) would affect functionality and performance. The win32 DWT is tied pretty close to the win32 OS backend. A GTK version might not feal quite the same on win32.

Yet, I agree that it certainly would remove many of the problems with DWT cross-platform development. All it would take to test the theory would be to implement the GTK version of DWT using the GTK dynamic loaders from the DUIT project (which load most of the GTK/GDK functions for both win32 and Linux already) and test the system by compiling on both platforms. Perhaps easier said than done. Of course, there would be no loss from the effort because you would have completed a linux/gtk port in the process! hmmm, it could work. Smile

PsychoBrat, I'm not sure what you mean by developing a more direct GTK wrapper. If I understand you correctly, that would be a huge and error-prone task. GTK is a very large library.

-JJR
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PsychoBrat



Joined: 23 Jul 2005
Posts: 22

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 2:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

JJR wrote:
PsychoBrat, I'm not sure what you mean by developing a more direct GTK wrapper. If I understand you correctly, that would be a huge and error-prone task. GTK is a very large library.


My point was that I can't see many people being enthusiastic about DWT if that was the path it took, but I wasn't very clear; allow me to clarify: Embarassed

The main appeal of SWT/DWT to me is that it uses native widgets and - given how well they've done this - can produce very attractive cross-platform GUIs (e.g. Poseidon looks quite good IMO). The other main benefit I see is that the environment in which a DWT application is deployed will (usually) already have the required libraries other than DWT itself, so one wouldn't need to ship around a huge mass of libraries for so much as a simple application.

Focussing only on a GTK version would remove these two benefits. The question is then introduced: if it were to be GTK-only, why not instead have a gtkmm-style wrapper for GTK? Yes, this would be a huge undertaking, but it has been done for C++ and other languages (hence we could learn many lessons from their results) and would be more useful since instead of being limited by SWT's need to provide the "lowest common denominator" of the various platforms, so to speak, full use could be made of GTK and its companion libraries. I dare say more developers would be willing to put their weight behind such a project.

Does that make more sense (at least in that you understand what I was trying to argue Smile)?
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JJR



Joined: 22 Feb 2004
Posts: 1104

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 9:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

PsychoBrat wrote:
My point was that I can't see many people being enthusiastic about DWT if that was the path it took, but I wasn't very clear; allow me to clarify: Embarassed


No problem. Smile

PsychoBrat wrote:
The main appeal of SWT/DWT to me is that it uses native widgets and - given how well they've done this - can produce very attractive cross-platform GUIs (e.g. Poseidon looks quite good IMO). The other main benefit I see is that the environment in which a DWT application is deployed will (usually) already have the required libraries other than DWT itself, so one wouldn't need to ship around a huge mass of libraries for so much as a simple application.


That's a valid point, for sure. Yet, once I started thinking about the GTK option, I realized that it really just requires installing the GTK libs using a simple installer package. Yes, it's not as clean, performant, or UI consistent; but I had to agree that if we had a linux version with GTK, it really couldn't hurt to try testing it on a win32/GTK platform as well (if it could be accomplished easily)... that's all. Not likely to be a popular choice, but certainly an easy to maintain one. Smile

PsychoBrat wrote:
Focussing only on a GTK version would remove these two benefits. The question is then introduced: if it were to be GTK-only, why not instead have a gtkmm-style wrapper for GTK? Yes, this would be a huge undertaking, but it has been done for C++ and other languages (hence we could learn many lessons from their results) and would be more useful since instead of being limited by SWT's need to provide the "lowest common denominator" of the various platforms, so to speak, full use could be made of GTK and its companion libraries. I dare say more developers would be willing to put their weight behind such a project.


Oh, I see what you meant. Actually, funny you should say that. That's exactly what the DUIT project is (soon to be called gtkd). It's a object oriented D wrapper around GTK, quite similar in functionality and purpose to gtkmm for C++. It is built to work on both win32 and linux. So, no need to attempt such a huge undertaking. It's already been done, and it's quite mature since it's been steadily developed by Antonio for the last couple of years.

PsychoBrat wrote:
Does that make more sense (at least in that you understand what I was trying to argue Smile)?


Yep, it mostly certainly clarifies things. Thanks! Smile

-JJR
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bobef



Joined: 05 Jun 2005
Posts: 269

PostPosted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 12:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't fully agree with PsychoBrat. Yes, the native look and high performace of the native widgets is, without doubt, very very important part of the project. But what I really love about it is the API. If I were designin it it would be very similar. I tried GTK. In my opinion the API sucks monkey ass. I don't know about the new DUI, but since it is just a wrapper I guess it won't be my taste.

Let me give an example. I started rewriting my ide (it was Win32) in GTK. After a week or so I gave up. GTK just sucked. I chose GTK because someone wrote heders for it and it is crossplatform (and there aren't many headers around for D, even less for cross-platform GUIs). Then I gave DWT a try (yes, it is not crossplatform yet, but there isn't any other really). For two or three days I achieved from scatch what with GTK took me a week. Except some java-style-nonsese it works just as expected.

And... after we have a cross-platform GUI with nice API, and it is "the official" D GUI, we could just start using it. Then one day if someone takes the huge task to translate the native ports of SWT it would be great. We will just swtich the libraries. But the code remains the same....
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PsychoBrat



Joined: 23 Jul 2005
Posts: 22

PostPosted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 4:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

bobef wrote:
I tried GTK. In my opinion the API sucks monkey ass. I don't know about the new DUI, but since it is just a wrapper I guess it won't be my taste.


Is that because of how 'raw' it was, given you were using straight GTK rather than an OO abstraction thereof, or do you dislike GTK overall? If you haven't had the chance yet, try to find some time to poke through gtkmm examples; I wouldn't be too quick to write off gtkmm or - probably more relevant to your case now - gtkd(duit) as "just a wrapper".

But then - of course - if you're repulsed by GTK in general, I'll try not to play the zealot too much. Wink
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