GUI strategy?

[Bill Baxter]

Frank Benoit wrote:
> Again and again it is said in this newsgroup: "D needs a GUI"
> But there are existing alternatives:
> DFL/GTKD/MinWin/DWT/wxD/....
> (and more http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?GuiLibraries)
> So I think some ppl are happy with one of those existing solutions.
> 
> So what is missing for those, who say D needs a GUI?
> 
> In the world outside of D, there are those big ones:
> - .NET/Mono
> - Eclipse RCP, Netbeans
> - QT
> - ...?
> 
> They all are not only a GUI, say a collection of basic controls. They
> are complete frameworks. They offer complete Dialogs, separation of data
> and presentation (MFC/data binding), persistance, update mechnisms,
> docking systems, extension mechanisms, tools, IDE support, commercial
> support, ...
> 
> Is it something like this, ppl mean if they say 'D needs a GUI'?
> I can only speak for myself, and yes, that is what I think. I wish i
> could use a framework, which has an answer for many of the common tasks
> while building a GUI application.
> 
> What do you think, does this problem "D needs a GUI" really exist?
> Seriously, how can this be solved in the next 1..2 years?
> ... and who will do it?

I think who will do it is the real issue.  Without a leader the GUI will 
die.  Walter didn't kill DWT by giving it his blessings, the main 
developer(s) killed it by moving on to other things.

If you're going to make THE gui for D (or any language), then you'd 
better be prepared to embark on a 5-10 year, or perhaps even life-long 
project.  You'll need to make frequent releases.  And you better respond 
to people's questions.  Not just this week but for the next 5-10 years. 
  And have a bug tracker and use it.  And treat people's patches as 
precious, either telling them why you're rejecting them or incorporating 
them ASAP.  And write lots of documentation and tutorials and example 
programs demonstrating your library.

And really that applies to any big open source library or project.

People don't want to rely on any project that seems to be the main 
developer's "when I can find time" side project.

Currently DFL seems the closest to me to having this kind of dedicated 
leader.  Hmm.. maybe I should see if there's anything to do to help DFL 
out...

--bb