Anomaly on Wiki4D GuiLibraries page

[John Reimer]

Hello Bill,

> On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 6:46 AM, John Reimer <terminal.node at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Back to the present.  Again, it would be easier if we just fix this
>> situation by changing the "dwt" newsgroup to "GUI" and forget about
>> the reference to "standard" for now.
>> 
> Ugh, that would be terrible.  I really don't care what troubles a GTKD
> user is facing, and I'm sure that the GTKD user couldn't care less
> what issues are hot in the DWT world.
> 


Maybe.  I was trying to be fair.  GTKD uses the dsource forums for the most 
part anyway.  Same goes for dfl and a few others.  On a few occasions, a 
GUI project has used the dwt newsgroup to make a few announcements.


> Putting several different gui groups under one top-level gui heading
> would be fine though.  I mean like
> digitalmars.D.gui.{dwt,gtkd,qtd,...}.
> 



Sure.  But I doubt it's going to happen because who knows what kind of lifespan 
other GUI projects will have.  It was risky to do it so early for dwt.  I 
suppose if nobody cares if the space is used or not, then it's fine.



>> The time to "standardize" a GUI library is
>> perhaps when a project has proven its survivability and popularity
>> enough to
>> warrant the title.  Even so, GUI's are going to be particularly
>> controversial, so it may be wise for D to avoid standardizing any
>> such thing
>> for awhile.  Just as there are people that don't like the Tango
>> "style" (a
>> very /few/ people, of course ;) ), even so there are going to be
>> people that
>> don't like dwt.
> With Python, they put wrappers for Tk into the standard distribution
> long ago, and it's still the only one there AFAIK, but I don't think
> it's all that popular any more.  wxPython, pyQt, and wxGTK have all
> taken off since then and offer a lot more functionality.
> 


I think this will be the same problem for D.


> Still it's nice to have a basic cross-platform GUI right there in the
> standard distribution of the language.
> 


If they agree to it... sure.  :)  Personally, I would rather have a very 
well defined package download system (like dsss was meant to be) that makes 
it easy for the user to install the library of his/her choice (like ruby 
gems).  Then integrate that system into something like descent so that a 
user can pick a choose from a list right from the IDE so that they can plug 
it right into their project.

It cuts down on the core package size and gives the developer a little more 
choice in the matter.  I suppose I'm revealing my dependency on dialup here. 
:)

-JJR