D "Swing"

Chris wendlec at tcd.ie
Sun Dec 23 13:03:37 PST 2012


There exist some GUI Toolkits for D, however, they are more or 
less all based on bindings to native toolkits.

Is anyone working on or are there plans to develop a pure 
Swing-like GUI Framework for D? While bindings have the advantage 
of using native widgets, they tend to lack behind as native 
widgets toolkits evolve and improve from version to version. 
Also, the full use of native features is not always easily 
accomplished (cf. SWT/JFace). A self-contained framework (like 
Swing) that could be extended as needed by a small set of native 
bindings - to implement os specific tasks - might be worth 
looking into.

D would have the benefit of hindsight in avoiding mistakes made 
in other GUI toolkits (such as Swing and SWT/JFace), and while 
this may sound like reinventing the wheel, catering for 
cross-platform bindings (Windows, Linux and OS X) is an endless 
race, and might not be real cross-platform after all, because 
either a whole platform is not (yet) catered for (cf. DWT), or 
some features are not yet implemented for one platform or another.

Programmers have to make practical decisions and from my own 
experience I know that nothing is worse than betting on the wrong 
horse, and at present I could not decide on a GUI toolkit for D.

Your comments and advice are more than welcome.


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