IDE written in D

[Chris]

On Tuesday, 30 July 2013 at 08:00:15 UTC, eles wrote:
> On Tuesday, 30 July 2013 at 05:46:42 UTC, Trvhgoy wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 30 July 2013 at 03:49:36 UTC, evilrat wrote:
>>> On Monday, 29 July 2013 at 22:19:35 UTC, Chris wrote:
>
>> Two important things that I miss in D are a D UI, as you said,
>
> Choice of a good toolkit is a long discussion.
>
> See this thread: 
> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/vtaufckbpdkpuxyztyoi@forum.dlang.org
>
> and my own suggestion therein:
>
> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/vtaufckbpdkpuxyztyoi@forum.dlang.org?page=10#post-ksirfxsiejlweyhomwmh:40forum.dlang.org
>
> that is, the FOX toolkit (http://fox-toolkit.org/goals.html).
>
> AFAICT, the choice to take SWT (or other famous toolkit) and 
> fork it, then port it to D (such as DWT is), is not the best 
> option. For a simple reason. The D port will always be compared 
> against the original toolkit, which will be almost always more 
> advanced and a moving target. People tend to go with the brand, 
> especially if the brand is well-known. It is a marketing 
> paradigm.
>
> OTOH, a good, but rather anonymous toolkit will be more 
> appropriate, at least for the following reasons:
>
> - a D-ported version of it won't be shaded by the original
> - evolution is slower, so not a fast-moving target
> - the team behind that toolkit will be more than glad to help, 
> as their toolkit will gain in popularity, and could even be 
> converted to D-development (instead of C or C++ or whatever)
>
>> and a really good IDE (written in D, stand alone, 
>> cross-plattform, open source, modern features and so on).
>
> Before going into that, the toolkit should be chosen. And, 
> obviously, the IDE should be written with the help of that 
> toolkit. It will not be just a useful tool, but also a showroom 
> for the toolkit (just like Borland's IDEs were for TurboVision 
> and, later, OWL).

I'm still dreaming of a pure D UI. But for now interfacing to C 
seems to be the only option / viable solution. I would recommend 
pure C frameworks such as Gtk or IUP. So far GtkD has worked for 
me on Linux. It is a mature framework and well documented. Also 
it features Glade Interface Designer (no need to code the layout 
by hand which is - IMO - a must have feature nowadays).

SWT / DWT is almost impossible to maintain for a small group. SWT 
was and is a 24/7 nightmare for developers, and they do it 24/7. 
SWT is a moving target, I agree, but so is D itself (deprecated 
features, new features etc.). So you have two moving targets to 
keep in sync with each other.