Ideal D GUI Toolkit

[Adam Wilson]

On Mon, 20 May 2013 15:35:57 -0700, Flamaros <flamaros.xavier at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> On Monday, 20 May 2013 at 21:47:56 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>
>> 1) A "core" for a GUI library written in D that people can start
>> hacking on (meaning you can create windows, and draw in a pixel
>> buffer, capture device input, all platform-independent), and
>>
>
> Dereclit and SDL already does that. Rewrite SDL isn't needed, for my  
> work it's already something I do and can tell you that it's really hard  
> to support many platforms as Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, consoles,...  
> It's too long to learn all specifications and issues.

Well I talked to Mike Parker (Derelict maintainer) at DConf and even he  
seemed to think that Derelict wasn't up to the task. The general consensus  
was that Derelict is primarily targeted at games. Which poses a number of  
issues in terms of UI toolkits, most of the relating to font rendering.

Specifically:
Font rendering is allowed to be vastly different across platforms.
Much of what we would require in UI's of the font rendering engine is not  
available at all, wrapping, line spacing, layout, etc.
Sub-pixel font hinting. Almost no games use this, and almost every OS  
toolkit does.
There was more that I am forgetting...

Derelict may be useful as a binding to OpenGL, but that's about where it  
ends, there is still MUCH work to be done on top of it.

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