FLTK native in 'D'. Would that be useful?

[matthiasm]

In article <e9sj5n$2skq$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, John Demme says...
>
>Is FLTK capable of integrating with the platform's look and feel? That is,
>would it look out of place in my Linux Gnome or KDE desktop environment?

It does not "integrate" because it does not use KDE or Qt widgets, but it does
not look like it is from a 
different planet either. It is relatively easy to add new themes to it. It does
look and feel the exact same 
on all platforms though, unless it is lauched with a different scheme.

>Does FLTK have some sort of HTML renderer or advanced text display box?

FLTK has the Fl_Help_Widget which renders a subset of HTML, including local
links, tables, images, 
fonts and size, etc. . It does support copy and paste.

>If the visual interface designer is any good and spat out good D code, then
>I'd probably use FLTK for D.  I really like the idea of a lightweight UI
>library to use with D- this pairs well with the way I write D code.

I like the C++ code it creates. It is readable and it also has a live preview
that reflects all visual changes 
right away in a code window. So you can always control what you are doing.

>Welcome to D.

Thanks you ;-)

>Are you thinking about forking FLTK, porting it then maintaining/syncing the
>D version, or just moving FLTK over to D and phasing out the C++ version? 
>(I like the last option, but some of your current users might be annoyed)

I am planning on porting FLTK1.1, then upgrading to FLTK1.2. FLTK1.1 is
feature-complete and has 
very little known bugs. That way, a D and a C++ version can easily be maintained
in parallel - avoiding 
getting tared and feathered by our C++ users.

It would also mean that the API is very very similar, so the mailing lists could
actually be shared. Most 
discussions are about little tricks and library useage, so they would apply to
both languages.

FLTK 1.2 is the UTF-8 and slightly extended version of FLTK 1.1. Once D-FLTK1.1
is stable, I would 
sync FLTK-1.2 to FLTK-1.1 (1.1 is currently slightly advanced) and then upgrade
D-FLTK1.1 to 1.2 to 
get the full international font support, table widgets, etc. .

As for FLTK2, this library is very much a moving target. It would be impossible
to keep the D and C++ 
version in sync. Having worked extensively with 1.1 and 2.0, 2.0 is IMHO not
substentially advanced. It 
has a slightly more polished API and better theme support though.

Matthias