Java > Scala

Adam Wilson flyboynw at gmail.com
Fri Dec 2 13:02:50 PST 2011


On Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:29:18 -0800, Gour <gour at atmarama.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:56:41 -0800
> "Adam Wilson" <flyboynw at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Adam,
>
>> Gour, I'd love to talk to you more about GUI's. I am new to D, but I
>> have spent years working with GUI toolkits and studying their
>> construction.
>
> Well, I'm just someone with not-so-much free time looking to help some
> GUI bindings project in order to be able to use it for open-source
> project(s).
>

Completely understandable. I'm not exactly swimming in free time either  
... :-S

>> My company would like to move to D in the future but, among other
>> things, the lack of a first class GUI toolkit makes that a non-starter
>> at the moment. If such a thing existed my company would be very
>> willing to jump ship.
>
> This is one of the best paragraph I read in this newsgroup in a recent
> time. I hope it will be loud-enough.
>

I hope it will to, but at the same time, wxD and DWT are inadequate for  
our needs, and will probably always be so. I consider 'first-class"  
something like a QML/JavaFX/WPF framework, and a lot of other companies  
are in the same boat. I have nothing against wxD or DWT, they just don't  
work for us.

>> And I have permission to use some limited company resources, mostly
>> just web hosting for the project right now, but ability to expand that
>> latter if the project shows progress.
>
> I believe that stuff like bitbucket/github should be enough...
>

I agree, I was mostly stating that as an indication that my company is  
willing to help out if progress being made.

>> I would also be up for leading the project, but a project of this
>> size would need lots of contributors. And there still needs to be
>> serious discussions about how to design such a project.
>
> /me nods
>
>> Personally, my UI design background tends away from traditional style
>> toolkits like wxD and DWT, and as such I would probably want to take
>> the project in a different direction than those.
>
> Interesting...
>
>> For example, all of our software at work is built on WPF and I can say
>> that I completely believe that WPF style UI toolkits are the way of
>> the future.
>
> Hmm...but WPF is Windows-only, right?
>
> Moreover, developing something from the scratch woudl require enormous
> amount of time in comparison with *just* providing higher-level D-ish
> API for some of the already available GUI toolkit.
>
> On top of that, I believe that the best forces available within D-army
> are now focused on improving DMD/Phobos, so don't know how many soldiers
> are ready into going developing something new.
>
> Let me say, that when the time matures, I'm definitely to have some
> solution more suitable for D and its advantages over e.g. C(++), but for
> now I believe that just having some pragmatic solution in the form of
> actively-worked-on project covering one of the {gtk,qt,wx}.
>

WPF is Windows only, and that is probably my biggest gripe with it outside  
of the numerous, and serious, implementation flaws. The closest you can  
get to WPF on Linux is Moonlight, and that is limited compared to what WPF  
can do. Argh!

That is true, but there are already two projects out their to accomplish  
that, and I personally would have no problem with anyone who wanted to  
work on those instead, they are useful and allow something to be built in  
the near-term, which will significantly help D. But I, nor my company, can  
do much of anything short term in D. Specifically, we are still developing  
our projects in C# and our product life-cycles are very long (10+ years)  
and a GUI toolkit isn't the only thing missing in terms of what we need to  
port. So I am thinking much longer term here.

It absolutely will take time, lots of it, but in the end, I feel that D  
will be much better positioned in the long-run to take serious market  
share if it has a state-of-the-art UI toolkit. Toolkits like wxD and DWT  
absolutely have a place, but the big players are moving away from that  
model of UI creation, as the news about QML demonstrates. QML is obviously  
early, but it's headed down the same path as JavaFX and WPF/Silverlight.

The reason I want to start now is that it's still early in the evolution  
of declarative UI's. WPF is only 5 years old, but it took MS about 300  
programmers and 4 years to build, and it's the oldest implementation of  
that type of UI that I know of outside academia. Given how long it took,  
starting now is better than starting later. The earlier you show up to  
market with what people want, the bigger market share you grab. That's  
good for D. :-)

My intention is not to draw away any devs who could potentially work on  
DMD/Phobos, in fact I want them working hard on those because without them  
my work is pointless, and in some cases impossible (showstopper bugs and  
ICE's are rather annoying like that). I suspect that it'll be a case of  
"me, myself, and I" working on a declarative UI for D for quite some time.  
But at the same time, I want to continue to have conversations with the  
community at large, probably mostly about design and whatnot. If there are  
people who really want to help I won't turn them away, but I'll avoid  
actively recruiting to make sure that DMD/Phobos gets first pick, as they  
should. Sound good?

>> Besides, why cover the same ground that those two projects are
>> already covering? I could list all the pro's and con's that we've
>> discovered in actual usage of WPF but I don't want to needlessly
>> clutter up this thread which has little to do with UI. :-)
>
> Time & effort which are limited in D community right now?
>

That is legitimate assertion and GUI toolkits are among the most  
complicated undertakings a group can attempt to carry out.

>> You can find me on IRC as LightBender and the email account I list
>> here is actively monitored.
>
> I'm available as 'gour' on IRC.
>
>
> Sincerely,
> Gour
>
>


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


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