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

[Charles D Hixson]

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> Charles D Hixson wrote:
> > ...
> Not sure I follow, DMD uses "gcc" to link on Linux and GDC is
> currently just one version behind (0.162 instead of 0.163) ?
> 
> There are several advantages of having a native D toolkit instead
> of linking to one in another language, just not sure this was it...
> 
> 
> As mentioned, the only problem I see (saw) with a native D toolkit
> is that it can't use any system C/C++ header files just as they are.
> 
> In e.g. wxD, those are all kept in C++ so they are not really much of a
> problem - whileas they are a big issue when porting instead of wrapping.
> 
> --anders

I know that *I* don't follow.  And I saw the wxd compilation
linking with wxd.  But there's something involving *.so
files that I ran into trouble with awhile back, and was told
that "dmd doesn't handle that".  I never did understand what
the problem was, just that I couldn't make the linking work.

Now I'll freely admit that I'm no expert at gcc.  I've done
MVS (IBM 360) and Scope and Scope2 (CDC), and cut my teeth
on Fortran and PL/1 but on personal computers, but the time
I switched to Linux I was using Python, and I've never
picked up more than a few bits around the edges of using
gcc, make, et al.  Maybe the guy who told me that "dmd won't
handle *.so files" was wrong.  Maybe I misunderstood him.
But without decent documentation I'm reluctant to enter that
tunnel again.  With gdc I have the gcc manuals.  They could
be improved, but they have LOTS of info.  But dmd is
different, and at my level of expertise I can't tell how.

OTOH, given a template (such as is provided by wxd), I and
tweak it and make minor adjustments.  In time I'll make
progress.  And I've got the gcc manuals, so I can figure out
just what a particular option in the make file means ... but
there's NO WAY that I could write it.  Not this year.
Probably not next.

I truly miss those long shelves of manuals that told
everything you wanted to know about the system in nicely
crossreferenced form.  We don't yet have a good replacement.
 A good replacement would be (possibly) a combination of
grep and a browser, so that you could search for any term
anywhere in the documentation, without losing your place.
(I manage a crude form of this with grep and either a text
editor or a browser depending on what kind of file it is,
but it's a clumsy substitute.)  Also, things have probably
gotten too complex now for the long shelf of books to do the
job, so this is partially nostalgia speaking.  (But it's
also a frustration with the pervasive lack of documentation.
 Man pages just don't suffice.)