Can D be cute? (Qt)

[Justin Johansson]

bearophile wrote:
> Justin Johansson:
>> Whilst QtD looks like a cool project, my question was really about 
>> whether D could achieve the same sorts of things that Qt does with its 
>> meta-object compiler.
>>
>> In other words, and calling a spade a spade, Qt is a "hack" to make C++ 
>> more pleasant for GUI.  Would it be possible for D to achieve natively 
>> the same sorts that Qt does via preprocessing to C++.
> 
> I suggest you to explain what such things are, and to give some examples too.
> 
> Bye,
> bearophile

Okay, perhaps not everybody here is across Qt.

Programming in Qt is almost C++ bu not exactly C++ as Qt uses a 
preprocessor to translate "enhanced C++" into "vanilla C++".

Here is an example that demonstrates that "Qt C++" is not "vanilla C++".

In Qt, one adorns class declarations with things that are not valid C++.

So in a class declaration you can say

class MyWidget
{
public:
	// regular C++ stuff, attributes and methods

public slots:
	// method declarations for intercepting event signals
};

You will observe that "public slots" is not valid C++.  Qt's meta-object 
compiler does a preprocessing of the MyWidget class so that methods 
declared under the "public slots:" scope are subject to some kind of 
reflection or introspection that enables events (signals) to be delegate 
to the respective methods.

In doing so, according to my naive understanding, the Qt MOC 
(meta-object compiler) compiles the MyWidget class retaining knowledge 
of compile time analysis of the MyWidget class methods which are 
designated as slots.

So this is some kind of black magic that the MOC does to Qt source code 
in order to make event routing easier.  The concepts of reflection come 
to mind here.  In a way the MOC processor must be keeping a lot of the 
static analysis of classes around in similar fashion that Java does.

Accordingly it is fair to ask why does Qt do this?  Obviously Qt 
designers do not feel that vanilla C++ is adequate for cutting GUI apps 
which is why they resort to a preprocessor.

Now I was thinking about why is C++ deficient for Qt to go to such 
resorts.  And if vanilla C++ is deficient for GUI programming, and given 
that D is viewed by many as a "better C++", then can D do natively what 
Qt has to do with a preprocessor?

I'm not an expert on Qt or its MOC (only 2 weeks into it).  Perhaps 
others on this NG might cotton on to what I'm trying to express and 
chime in.

Does the simple example above help explain what I'm on about?

Cheers

Justin Johanssom