Whither DWT?

[Dave]

clayasaurus wrote:
> Kyle Furlong wrote:
>> Shawn has not responded to inquiries on dsource for quite a while. He 
>> is the sole developer for the "official" GUI toolkit for our beloved :D.
>>
>> This cannot continue. All I ask is that the official toolkit be in 
>> active development, which leaves four options:
>>
>> 1. Renew Shawn's interest in DWT
>> 2. Install a new lead for DWT or a branch of DWT
>> 3. Choose another official toolkit
>> 4. Develop a new official toolkit
> 
> If Shawn doesn't come back in a couple of months, I'd suggest option 3, 
> namely, DUI http://www.dsource.org/projects/dui . My reasoning...
> 
> #1) Ant seems to stick around and is doing a superb job with it.
> 
> #2) DWT is Windows only and to make DWT cross platform means to 
> essentially rewrite DWT for each platform you target, this is a 
> development and maintenance nightmare. Meanwhile, DUI being based upon 
> GTK means it either already works or is an easy port to all platforms 
> GTK targets.
> 
> #3) Is there anyone else around here with enough experience to write DWT 
> ports? How familiar are people with SWT in the first place? Correct me 
> if wrong, but I get the feeling people are more familiar with GTK.
> 
> DWT _may_ be a better product, but DUI is more practical.

Good points.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't there a number of (large) dependencies you 
have to pre-install to use DUI on Windows. Like GTK + MinGW or CYGWIN 
and such?

To me, unless that is handled very nicely by an installer (which is also 
easy to duplicate for end-user installation routines), that would be a 
major strike against it being more practical.

IMHO, the choice needs to be 'seamless' on Windows because that will be 
the major platform for D in the foreseeable future.

Thanks,

- Dave