Java > Scala -> new thread: GUI for D

[Adam Wilson]

On Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:33:48 -0800, a <a at a.com> wrote:

> QML looks like it is (currently ?) targeted at the kind of GUI  
> programming when you make your own custom widgets for everything. It  
> only provides the most basic components such as rectangles, text, and  
> images. There isn't, say, a button components - you have to make one  
> using a Rectangle and a MouseArea. One consequence of this is that  
> typical GUI programming is much slower. Another consequence is that you  
> can't build GUIs that look native on multiple platforms. QML is probably  
> great for some things, but it is not a replacement for GUI  toolkits  
> such as Qt.

This is similar in concept to how XAML in WPF/Silverlight is used to  
construct screens, and it's not bad idea. And the fact that the UX can be  
skinned to look nothing like the default OSUI is actually probably one of  
the most useful things about WPF and Silverlight. Yes, it doesn't look  
true to the OS, but you'll find that in the UI Design world, that is of  
surprisingly little importance. The most important thing to a UI designer  
is that the UI looks and works the same across *ALL* OS's. That's kind of  
the point of HTML/CSS and the whole internet. Facebook looks and works the  
same regardless of whether I pull it up in Chrome or Firefox, Mac or Linux.

Now, not having higher level constructs like Buttons, Textboxes, etc. will  
put QML at a huge disadvantage to tools like WPF that DO have those  
constructs. In WPF you apply a new look to an existing button, you don't  
build the button from scratch. The new look is usually made out of the  
primitives similar to those in QML, but all the code and functionality  
that makes it a Button is still there, and that's important, because the  
functionality is the hard part, I can skin a WPF button in under an hour,  
I dare say you couldn't write the code for a button in an hour.

-- 
Adam Wilson
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/