WPFfor d

[Adam Wilson]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2013 12:35:17 -0800, Jacob Carlborg <doob at me.com> wrote:

> On 2013-02-17 23:29, Adam Wilson wrote:
>
>> I think it could be easily implemented if instead of using runtime XAML
>> deserialization and reflection we used a specialized GUI definition
>> language that is translated into D at compile time. This would give the
>> required flexibility to work around D's lack of the deep reflection
>> capabilities that .NET has and make the app much quicker at runtime. I'd
>> prefer to avoid reflection as much as possible due to the associated
>> performance hits.
>>
>> I love the ideas behind WPF, but as usual at Microsoft, WPF is a very
>> poor implementation of a fantastic idea.
>>
>> Thumbnail sketch of my vision for a WPF-like GUI Library in D, for now
>> I'll call it Horizon:
>> - Purpose built domain specific language for GUI declaration
>> - Pluggable language compiler back-end to support different target
>> languages.
>> - Dependency Property system similar to WPF to support flexible
>> databinding.
>> - Concurrent Dependency Properties to allow multi-threaded access to the
>> UI. (Needs specialized container support in Phobos.)
>> - Pluggable rendering core to support multiple operating systems.
>
> When using a custom tool kit like this. How do you handle windows, you  
> do need to use native windows, right? I mean, you need to receive events  
> and similar for your application.
>

Same way games handle windows, you get the window, hijack the handle for  
DirectX or OpenGL and then tell those toolkits what window style you want.  
This allows the designer to choose to keep the window chrome or not.

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