Ideal D GUI Toolkit

[Adam Wilson]

On Mon, 20 May 2013 14:47:47 -0700, Andrej Mitrovic  
<andrej.mitrovich at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/20/13, Adam Wilson <flyboynw at gmail.com> wrote:
>> * There is a deep-seated distrust of any toolkit that does not use the  
>> OS
>> Native UI widgets.
>
> That's a shame. If you go native you'll have the "look and feel", but
> you'll have X times the work where X is the number of platforms
> supported. Also, each platform has its own bugs, so you'd have to
> write a lot of workaround code as well (e.g. wxWidgets is full of
> win32 workarounds).
>
> Doing it non-native slows you down at first, but it gives you a lot
> more control on how you can render things. You can add a feature
> without having to worry on how to port the feature to other platforms.
> And finally, you can simulate the native windowing environment.
>
> Just to mention this, we already have native libraries (and written in
> D without wrapping C++ libs) such as DGUI, DFL, DWT. I hardly find
> them successful, they get the occasional pull request, but otherwise
> they seem to lack any sort of team effort or going-forward schedule.
> So I'd say going "native" has already been a failed experiment (take
> that with a huge grain of salt, it's just my personal viewpoint :) ).
>
>> * Nobody believes that we can do it, you'll hear a lot of moaning about
>> how much work it is. My reply to that is: And Linux is such a piece of
>> cake right? It's only the most widely used kernel on the planet.
>
> I think the lesson with Linux is that one person initially did a lot
> of heavy lifting, and then others joined in. I doubt it would work as
> it did if instead Linus opened a thread asking for a team of
> developers to create a new OS from scratch.
>
> Anyway, there's no doubt a D GUI would be a huge undertaking. There
> would almost certainly be a lot of rewriting involved. It's very easy
> to make mistakes early on and hardcode something, only later to
> realize it's way too brittle so it requires a rewrite. If the system
> is modular enough then the rewrites become less painful. And if the
> system is properly unit tested then regressions become less likely,
> and this is important.
>

It's not the rewriting itself that bothers me, I've worked on enough team  
projects to know that it's nigh inevitable. My point was just that a good  
design process can reduce the amount of rewriting that happens by keeping  
a clear focus on the end goal and being willing to say "no".

> From what I've seen when a codebase becomes large enough, what
> inevitably happens is people stop hacking on the codebase almost
> entirely. It's usually because the codebase is huge and not modular,
> or undocumented, or not tested, or doesn't have any sort of schedule
> on the work that needs to be done.
>
> I have zero doubt that we have the know-how or hacking ability to
> actually work and solve GUI problems in D, but I have big doubts that
> we would ever have leadership that would make sure we have a proper
> schedule and todo list, proper discussions, the guts to say "no" to
> features, etc. It's just not going to work if people randomly create
> pull requests with some code they thought would be nice to include in
> a GUI library.
>
> So to actually do it, I think we need:
>
> 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
>
> 2) Solid leadership.
>
> I'd say #2 is more important than #1, because #1 is something many
> people can do, and #2 is the really hard bit.

#2 is critical. #1 is just technical leg-work.

#2 is tough to find, and to be honest, I don't know that anyone here could  
say that they have the technical chops to make it happen. I mean how many  
of us actually do GUI coding every day? I know I do, but I don't think  
that is enough to qualify one as a leader. We also need a vision and  
developer commitment.

I'd be willing to lead the project, I'm just not sure I am the right  
person to do so. I have a vision, and the skeleton of a design, but no  
code. I am willing, but my ability is a question mark...

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