WPFfor d

[Adam Wilson]

On Sun, 17 Feb 2013 11:06:40 -0800, Jacob Carlborg <doob at me.com> wrote:

> On 2013-02-17 20:00, Adam Wilson wrote:
>
>> If you're looking for something that is as easy to use as WPF with as
>> much power, you won't find it in the open-source world. WPF is over
>> 40,000 classes strong, and while Open-Source is generally good for large
>> systems projects WPF requires some specialized knowledge to pull off
>> with any success. I have the graphics training required and I would love
>> to get started on a WPF for D but given that it is such a huge
>> undertaking i'd need help, if you're interested in helping let me know.
>> I'd love to put together a team and starting hacking out some code....
>
> I've been thinking for a long time to try and serialize widgets in DWT.  
> And then build a tool for graphically creating GUIs. I guess that's  
> similar to how XAML works.
>

It is similar yes. In WPF, XAML is specialized XML that is deserialized at  
compile-time and translated into C#/VB.NET etc. In Silverlight/WinRT it is  
deserialized at runtime. I think for D compile-time deserialization makes  
sense for two reasons. The first is that you get more flexibility to work  
around D's lack of the deep reflection capabilites of .NET. The second is  
that as good as XAML is, it is ridiculously verbose. Creating a  
purpose-built DSL would be a much more efficient implementation idea IMHO.  
This would also make it much easier to re-target the GUI language and  
libraries to other languages.

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