dmd support for IDEs

Jacob Carlborg doob at me.com
Mon Oct 12 11:12:16 PDT 2009


On 10/12/09 19:41, language_fan wrote:
> Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:54:25 +0200, Jacob Carlborg thusly wrote:
>
>> On 10/12/09 14:11, language_fan wrote:
>>> Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:02:11 +0200, Jacob Carlborg thusly wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 10/12/09 04:14, Chad J wrote:
>>>>> Too bad we can't just make programs switch between GUI backends at
>>>>> will ;)
>>>>
>>>> Why not have a GUI toolkit available on almost all platforms that uses
>>>> native controls just like DWT?
>>>
>>> The list of native platforms SWT supports is this:
>>>
>>> Win32
>>>     WPF (under development)
>>> AIX, FreeBSD, Linux, HP-UX, Solaris:
>>>     Motif
>>>     GTK+
>>> Mac OS X:
>>>     Carbon
>>>     Cocoa
>>> QNX Photon
>>> Pocket PC
>>>
>>> As a FLTK2, Qt 3.x, Qt 4.x, Swing, and (forked) Harmonia user I fail to
>>> see how SWT is more native than the ones I develop for. All SWT
>>> applications look weird, unthemed, and have horrible usability issues
>>> in the file open/save dialogs. DWT brings another level of cruft above
>>> the "lightweight" SWT and performs badly.
>>
>> As a said previously SWT is more native because it uses the native GUI
>> library available on the current platform, for windows (before vista)
>> win32, osx cocoa and on linux gtk. It doesn't decide how a button should
>> look, it doesn't try do draw a button that is similar to the natives, it
>> just call the native library to draw the button.
>
> The problem is, 99% of win32 users use the win32 gui toolkit on win32,
> 99% of osx users use cocoa, but on Linux/BSD maybe about 40% use gtk+. It
> is not The native toolkit to use. I do not even have it installed on my
> system.
>
>> I don't know what you mean by "unthemed" but if you refer to that
>> applications on windows don't get the winxp look you have the same
>> problem if you create the application in c++ or c and uses win32. It's
>> caused by an older dll is loaded as default and to get the winxp look
>> you have to request it to load the newer dll with a manifest file.
>> Welcome to dlls.
>
> I mostly work on *nixen. The unthemed means that I do not have *any* gtk+
> libraries installed anywhere so it defaults to the ugly default theme. To
> me gtk+ does not have the native feel as I never see any application
> written in it. Like I said, I only use { FLTK2, Qt 3.x, Qt 4.x, Swing,
> and (forked) Harmonia}. I am sorry if you have trouble reading that.
> Whenever an application comes with its own (statically linked) gtk+ libs,
> it will look bad. I do not have any "control panel" to change the look
> and feel of the gtk+ applications.
>
>>
>> If you have problems with the open/save dialogs in SWT either you will
>> have the same problem in other native applications because it uses the
>> native dialogs or there's a bug in SWT.
>
> Look, this is what I get on Win32:
>
> http://johnbokma.com/textpad/select-a-file-dialog.png
>
> on Linux:
>
> http://www.matusiak.eu/numerodix/blog/wp-content/uploads/20050710-
> kdefilechooser.png
>
> on Java:
>
> http://www.dil.univ-mrs.fr/~garreta/docJava/tutorial/figures/uiswing/
> components/FileChooserOpenMetal.png
>
> You can probably see something that I have started to call 'consistency'.
> Almost the same buttons and layouts on every platform. I immediately know
> how it works. The same design has been there since Windows 95, if I
> recall correctly. This is what many people have learned to live with.
>
> Now every time I see a gtk+/swt/dwt application I wonder where the heck
> that unintuitive terrible piece of cr*p came:
>
> http://book.javanb.com/swt-the-standard-widget-toolkit/images/0321256638/
> graphics/14fig03.gif
>
> Native? It might very well use native binaries on my platform, but the
> native feel ends there.

Of course it will look strange when you use an application built on a 
toolkit it isn't built for. Will have to wait for a Qt version.



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