Anomaly on Wiki4D GuiLibraries page

[John Reimer]

Hello tim,

> On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:08:28 +1300, John Reimer
> <terminal.node at gmail.com>  wrote:
> 
>> ...............
>> Personally, I think we're at a point in D's life where we don't need
>> to
>> call it standard.  Maybe it would be better to have a newsgroup
>> called
>> "GUI" instead.  I'm  not sure.
>> -JJR
>> 
> That sounds more fair. Incase you were interested in why I don't like
> dwt,  it is part because it makes my small apps huge and part because
> I've  struggled with it in the past to get icon resource to work
> correctly. I  think it is still only good for java and if I try to go
> back I will then  run into more problems.
> 


Well, I hear what you are saying about the apps being rather large.  But 
then, if we compared it to other GUI libraries, much of the size issue of 
DWT is probably more due to perception.  What I mean to say is that DWT static 
links everything right now, which causes the executable to look large.  Other 
GUI libraries might change your perception of their bloat by dynamic linking 
with their framework.  DWT (eventually) could do the same and perhaps achieve 
more success impressing people with a dwt application's slim figure too. :)  

DWT is a fairly comprehensive library.  Just recently, I've ported over a 
(mozilla/XPCOM) browser control for the linux version (windows version in 
the works).  It's rare for a large framework to have all the goodies and 
a small executalbe size.  You'll have to try DFL or FLTK (fltk is actually 
bindings only) for that... and the compromise will likely give you far less.

So, maybe have a look at wxwidgets and qt, libraries that are very full-featured, 
and see if these are able to make small programs... if they are... then have 
a look for the large dynamic library(s) and see how big they are. :)

What this means ultimately is that DWT should be available in a shared library 
version.  This has kind of already been demonstrated with DWT and ddl, but 
so far nothing user friendly is immediately available.  Hopefully, someday 
we can do something about that.

Sorry to hear you had problems with it.  Please feel free to post in the 
dwt newsgroup if you need help. 

-JJR