Whither DWT?

[Charles Hixson]

Anders F Björklund wrote:

> Charles Hixson wrote:
> 
>>> I guess the community needs to decide exactly what it would like from a
>>> GUI/Framework.
>>> 
>>> Are we looking for
>>> Portability to multiple platforms?
> 
>> ..
>> Work in progress
>> [...]
> 
> BTW; Thunderbird hated this start, it thought your post was one big sig?

Ouch.  OK, I'll bottom post from now on.  Some groups seem to prefer that
anyway, though to me it seems more reasonable to intermix things.

> 
>> From my personal perspective, it needs to work well on my personal
>> system,
>> which runs Linux.  It also needs to be easy to set up (or come with the
>> compiler), because I'm not *committed* to D.  I just want to get my
>> project done, and D would be a nice tool.
>> ...
> 
> wxD is intended for Linux (GTK+), Mac OS X (Carbon), as well as Windows.
Nice.
> 
>> Better to start with a simple framework that can later be expanded, and
>> get
>> it working WELL.  (Simple means being able to do dialog boxes.  Ability
>> to use input from a GUI builder, like glade, or SpecTCL would be a real
>> plus, no question, but is LESS necessary that having a solid system.)
> 
> For wxWidgets, there are several editors for the XML-based "XRC" format.
> One (from the wx author) is: http://www.anthemion.co.uk/dialogblocks/
> 
wxWidgets is well developed, indeed.  I've looked at using it with Python. 
I haven't considered it with D largely because of the low revision number
at SourceForge.  0.3 is a bit scarey.

>>...
> 
> wxD is somewhat huge, but most of the code is rather straight-forward.
> (not counting some of the voodoo going on with events and such tricks)

For my purposes, size isn't a major consideration.  I've been considering
(among other things) C++ & Qt.  I just don't like to need to depend so much
on pointers.  And garbage collection is really a VERY nice feature.
>> Another good feature would be documentation that says exactly which
>>...
> 
> I've been working on such a list for wxD 0.05, but it's a lot of demos
> and I'm testing them on three platforms - so it amounts to some work...
> 
Sorry, here I was talking about D's gui packages in general, which are
mainly hosted at DSource.
> I've also started on some minor docs, like http://wxd.sf.net/Hello.html
> and with adding some API docs with Doxygen, like http://wxd.sf.net/docs/
> In the long run there needs to be a tutorial or longer documentation,
> explaining how to get started - with more words than just a Readme...
Sounds VERY nice. 

> ...
>> Also needed is a good way to report bugs.  I think the capability for 
>> this is built into dsource, though I haven't tried to use it, since
>> mainly I've been studying and evaluating rather than developing.
> 
> If you mean reporting wxD bugs, there should be a link on the home page:
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=133831
Sorry, here I was talking about D's gui packages in general, which are
mainly hosted at DSource.

> 
>> ...
> 
> The *-config scripts output stuff in GCC format, so you need to use GDC
> - or feed it through some kind of preprocessing filter for DMD syntax...
> I ended up hardcoding DMs Makefile, and using wx-config for GNUmakefile.
> But I had to use "gcc" for the actual linking, not the "dmd" command ?
You are clearly MUCH more expert than I am.  I still build makefiles by
guess and try, based on what worked previously.  Programming I've done for
decades, but I'm in my early days with Linux and assoc GNU utils.
> 
> AFAIK: DMC/DMD doesn't do shared libraries, but for the GNU platforms
> at least wxWidgets is possible to link as shared (if wanted), for wxD.
> 
>      ****
> 
> I think that wxD could serve as a GUI for D.
> At least until something better is ready...
> 
> It's just an "alpha" in terms of stability,
> but then again so is the D language itself ?
> 
> --anders
Huuu... I would rate D as Beta.  If wxD is on the same level of stability as
D, perhaps I should think more seriously about it.  (Perhaps, anyway, I
should install gdc and see what can be done that way.  Would gdc link well
with wxD?)
-- 
Work in progress