D "Swing"

Jacob Carlborg doob at me.com
Mon Dec 24 04:44:08 PST 2012


On 2012-12-24 12:56, Chris wrote:

> Yes, I agree Java is a pain when building GUI's. I only mentioned it as
> an example of an independent framework. Personally I'd prefer HTML(like)
> solutions for both desktop and mobile.

How is that working? You display a window with an HTML view and renders 
the complete GUI in that? Or are we just talking web applications?

> There is simply no time for
> endless platform support, especially in small teams. But JS has its
> limitations as to UI development.

I don't agree with that. In my experience a quite a lot of platform 
specific code is required anyway if you want to have a good application. 
Mobile applications have a very different GUI and look-and-feel compared 
to desktop applications. It's not just that the buttons are bigger and 
look different you might have a completely different structure of the 
mobile application. You just don't physically have the same amount of 
space on a mobile application and therefore cannot have the same content 
(or all the content).

> So a solution that uses HTML for
> rendering and allows any language to implement the application logic
> would get my vote. I think the D community should look in that direction
> too.

I can tell you right now that most of the developers in the D community 
don't share your ideas. Most people here seem to prefer a native 
approach. I mean, that's why we use D, otherwise we could use Java, 
JavaScript, Python, Ruby or something similar.

> I am simply not convinced that DWT will take off (much as I
> appreciate the work that has been put into it), because I remember the
> huge effort it took SWT/JFace developers, although they were supported
> by a large community and a big company.

The positive thing is that they already done most of the work. We just 
need to port it.

> Also, it seems a bit absurd that
> we have a good compilable cross-platform language like D and cannot
> fully use it as such due to GUI issues.

That I can agree with.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg


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