FLTK native in 'D'. Would that be useful?

[MatthiasM]

Dave wrote:

> A couple of questions...
> 
> Why did you decide to base the port off of FLTK1 instead of FLTK2 (I 
> don't know the history of FLTK1 vs. 2)? 

FLTK2 has been forked off of FLTK1 a very long time ago (more than five 
years ago) and even though it is being used in at least one commercial 
product, it has never left alpha state. I would love to see FLTK2 
stabilize, but I don't see that happening in the next six months. FLTK1 
has been developed in parallel and has more features and is extremely 
stable (whatever that means for an OpenSource project).

There are three disadvantages to FLTK1 over FLTK2:

1: FLTK1.1 has no Unicode/UTF8 support. However, this has been 
implemented as a patch for WMSWindows and X11 already. After completeing 
the port, I could imagine to put this patch into the C++ and D source tree.

2: FLTK2 has a better theme support (but by no means "complete"). Work 
would be needed on 1 and 2.

3: FLTK2 has a better vector symbol support. Something that could be 
easily backported. I doubt that many users even know about this feature 
though ;-)

> Is there a risk that the D port 
> would basically become obsolete before it's done?

I am more concerned about trying to follow a moving target by porting 
FLTK2, then getting annoyed, and then ending up with yet another fork 
between C-FLTK2 and D-FLTK2.

> And how can I best start contributing to the port right now w/o impeding 
> your progress, duplicating work or otherwise stepping on your toes? An 
> answer of "you can't" is fine too <g>

All the replies were very exciting and encouraging. I will set up and 
SVN repository next week, hopefully with a working "Hello World" on OS 
X. I will then post the URL to this forum.

You can help by either porting core functionality for other platforms 
(X11, Win32), by porting the higher level widget code, or by 
implementing a build environment for any (or all) of those three 
platforms. Details will be in a README file.

Thanks for the support!

Matthias