GUI libraries

Rikki Cattermole alphaglosined at gmail.com
Fri Nov 29 19:44:14 PST 2013


On Friday, 29 November 2013 at 02:00:50 UTC, Chris Cain wrote:
> On Friday, 29 November 2013 at 01:44:34 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
>> Still lacking proper beard ;)
>
> A programmer without a beard! Blasphemy! Witch!
>
> ----
>
> But anyway, going along with what you guys are saying, if 
> you've ever seen reviews on Android apps, a lot of apps get 
> lots of bad reviews for not adhering to the Android design 
> standards. Using cross-platform toolkits are usually a death 
> sentence for your rating. So, there's a lot to be said about 
> making sure your app looks consistent in the OS it's running in.
>
> Some apps do "get away" with something that is somewhat custom. 
> Take, for instance, Steam on Windows. It doesn't look like a 
> "proper" Windows application, but it works very well for it 
> regardless. That said, Steam on Mac is terrible because it 
> feels too much like a windows app there (mainly in regards to 
> scrolling behavior).
>
> That all said, if I were writing a GUI app in D right now, I 
> would probably write my own toolkit and make something super 
> simple (but "good" looking) to test out some new ideas. I think 
> we really need an easy, straight-forward, and powerful UI 
> toolkit that takes advantage of D's unique features (such as 
> compile-time specialization, maybe using DSLs that compiled & 
> used at compile-time instead of runtime) while reflecting well 
> in comparison to the newest paradigms of application design 
> (think how Android & iOS apps are made and maybe even a bit of 
> web design). I can't quite precisely quantify what we need, but 
> I think a fresh approach to the UI programming interface could 
> set D apart in this area.
>
> Simply using a translation of an old UI toolkit is "easy" but 
> will not make UI applications pleasing to develop.

+1
This is why with DOOGLE I have made shaders for e.g. controls 
completely overridable at app, system and user levels. Shaders 
control all looks of the app. Although this does mean a bit of 
calculation and binding of information regarding screen and 
component size.

What does this mean? Maintainers for a distro or OS can easily 
make it look like what is expected for that OS.
With regards to feel that would have to be hard coded at this 
point.

Is it just me or is a button a layout? As far as I'm aware most 
gui toolkits think of it as not. It gives much more control over 
it.
Just my 2 cents over how I feel with them.

Eventually I would like to have DOOGLE emit html/css/js and work 
like GWT (Google Web Toolkit [1]). This really would be hugely 
beneficial for making a desktop application into a web app. And 
set it apart.

[1] http://www.gwtproject.org/


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