GUI library for D

[Alvaro]

El 04/04/2011 23:51, Matthias Pleh escribió:
> Am 04.04.2011 23:34, schrieb Daniel Gibson:
>> Am 04.04.2011 23:27, schrieb Matthias Pleh:
>>> was: [GSoC] Container proposals by Ishan and Christian
>>>
> [snip]
>>>
>>> This were the requirments for the GUI library:
>>> - Corss-platform (Win/linux)
>>
>> Don't forget Mac OSX.
> I just listed the requirments in our company, but you're rigth. We must
> support at least the three main platforms Win/linux/OSX
>
>> Also note that on Linux there are two widely used toolkits, GTK and Qt,
>> and that QT is better in emulating GTK than the other way round (you can
>> let GTK use the current QT theme or something, but it'll still use the
>> GTK filepicker etc. QT's GTK emulation is better and uses the real GTK
>> filepicker).
> that's true
>
>>
> [snip]
>>
>> I don't know if wee need yet another GUI library.
> I have not said, that it must be create a completly new library.
> We just have to find out, what are the requirments for the D community,
> and how can we achieve that.
> Whe have mainly 4 options:
> - support an existing project and help to meet our requirments
> - fork an existing project and advance it to our requirments
> - port a library from another language and advance it, to meet better
> the D coding style
> - create a new library (which also can be based on a older abandoned
> project)
>
>> Are you sure Qt and DWT aren't good enough?
> As I mentioned in my post, I couldn't assure the others. Not every
> decision-maker base his decisions on pure technical arguments, sometimes
> it's just his gut feeling or the cleaning lady's advice, who knows :)
>
> °Matthias

Why do you say "it must be a completely new library"? Why don't the 
existing ones fit?

I last week tried gtkD, both on Linux and Windows. Quite nice, only I 
don't really like how it looks on Windows, that it can't use the native 
controls. And then there is QtD and wxD (from wxWidgets) both using 
native controls.

Anyway I think I know what you mean by "the D coding style". All those 
are direct ports/bindings that retain their original style and don't 
really take advantage of D's facilities.

For instance, in gtkD (QtD probably too, haven't looked at it), classes 
have classic functions for accessing and modifying "properties", like 
window.setTitle("Find"); w=window.getWidth(). But D provides real 
@properties. That could be improved to window.title = "Find"; 
w=window.width; Etc, etc.

The use of properties, delegates for event handlers, D's Unicode 
strings, etc. could certainly be improved in libs like those. But anyway 
they have done a great job in providing D with working GUI APIs.