minwin

[Bill Baxter]

Tomas Lindquist Olsen wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> Tomas Lindquist Olsen wrote:
>>> Hi folks.
>>> Just want to tell people that I have uploaded a zip with a MinWin 
>>> that builds on DMD 0.175.
>>>
>>> Check it at:
>>> http://wiki.dprogramming.com/MinWin/HomePage
>>>
[snip]
>> This would be nice because it would, for instance, give OpenGL GUIs 
>> (like say Luigi[1] ;-)) an easy way to invoke native dialogs without 
>> having to switch whole hog from a simple GL-oriented toolkit like GLD 
>> or SDL to something else less GL-friendly.
>>
>> [1] http://www.dsource.com/projects/luigi
>>
>> --bb
> 
> It's an interesting use case, though I can't help think a seperate 
> "dialogs" library would be better for this. 

Well, the bulk of the code in this "dialogs" library would be identical 
to the dialog handling code in MinWin.  I only had to add 3 lines of 
code to MinWin to make the dialogs work stand-alone (for Windows 
version).  That code was:

     version(NOMAIN) {}
     else {
        [existing winmain code here...]
     }

(is there a way to do version(!NOMAIN)?)
I could see maybe breaking the dialogs part of MinWin into a separate 
sub-library, but I definitely don't see any reason why it should be a 
separate project.

> Also currently MinWin does 
> not even have a simple yes/no dialog (though it's pretty easy to add).
> 
> [rant]
> 
> For me MinWin seems very much like a winner as it is one of the only D 
> gui libraries that work crossplatform and it doesn't try to do too much. 
>  executables are pretty small compared to what you get from Harmonia as 
> an example.

Part of the smallness is probably due to wrapping native widgets, and 
just not having all that much functionality to begin with.

> The posts I've done on the DSource forums would certainly suggest having 
> a svn repository there. I'm not sure I'm the right guy for maintaining 
> it though. I dont know GTK+ or Motif and only some fairly basic Win32, 
> but I have a genuine interest in a crossplatform gui library that is 
> easy to work with!

Well that's a good reason to put it on DSource.  It puts it in a much 
more neutral ground that one individual's personal web site, and makes 
transitioning of project lead and sharing of responsibilities easier. 
Also Trac is pretty sweet.

> (I use Ultimate++ in C++ which btw is AWESOME!!!, even if the author 
> luzr doesn't seem to like D) :P

Looks interesting.  Thanks for the link.  The one thing I was most 
curious about was whether it uses emulation or wrapping of native 
widgets.  But I can't find that mentioned anywhere.  All the screen 
shots seem to show a winXP kind of look and some clearly non-native 
widgets (like the color picker), so I'm thinking it's emulated with 
winXP look everywhere?  Is it themeable?

Whoa, though, that QTF is crazy!
http://www.ultimatepp.org/srcdoc$RichText$QTF$en-us.html
"WTF" is more what comes to mind... it seems so out of place in a 
toolkit that puts a priority on simplicity and clarity.

They should make T-Shirts:
   Got "{{1:2 A1::l40/60R6 at 3 A2::! B1:: B2}}"?

> 
> What I'd really like to see for MinWin is active development. From 
> looking at the todo list it seems quite a lot was still planned and 
> there are known bugs as well.

Ok, why don't you go ahead and ask "admin AT dsource DOT org" for a 
WinMin page?

> D seems such a perfect language to do gui applications. It's really a 
> shame the toolkits don't step up to it.

Well, D is yet young.  These things take time.

--bb