Java > Scala

[Don]

On 02.12.2011 22:02, Adam Wilson wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:29:18 -0800, Gour <gour at atmarama.net> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:56:41 -0800
>> "Adam Wilson" <flyboynw at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hello Adam,
>>
>>> Gour, I'd love to talk to you more about GUI's. I am new to D, but I
>>> have spent years working with GUI toolkits and studying their
>>> construction.
>>
>> Well, I'm just someone with not-so-much free time looking to help some
>> GUI bindings project in order to be able to use it for open-source
>> project(s).
>>
>
> Completely understandable. I'm not exactly swimming in free time either
> ... :-S
>
>>> My company would like to move to D in the future but, among other
>>> things, the lack of a first class GUI toolkit makes that a non-starter
>>> at the moment. If such a thing existed my company would be very
>>> willing to jump ship.
>>
>> This is one of the best paragraph I read in this newsgroup in a recent
>> time. I hope it will be loud-enough.
>>
>
> I hope it will to, but at the same time, wxD and DWT are inadequate for
> our needs, and will probably always be so. I consider 'first-class"
> something like a QML/JavaFX/WPF framework, and a lot of other companies
> are in the same boat. I have nothing against wxD or DWT, they just don't
> work for us.
>
>>> And I have permission to use some limited company resources, mostly
>>> just web hosting for the project right now, but ability to expand that
>>> latter if the project shows progress.
>>
>> I believe that stuff like bitbucket/github should be enough...
>>
>
> I agree, I was mostly stating that as an indication that my company is
> willing to help out if progress being made.
>
>>> I would also be up for leading the project, but a project of this
>>> size would need lots of contributors. And there still needs to be
>>> serious discussions about how to design such a project.
>>
>> /me nods
>>
>>> Personally, my UI design background tends away from traditional style
>>> toolkits like wxD and DWT, and as such I would probably want to take
>>> the project in a different direction than those.
>>
>> Interesting...
>>
>>> For example, all of our software at work is built on WPF and I can say
>>> that I completely believe that WPF style UI toolkits are the way of
>>> the future.
>>
>> Hmm...but WPF is Windows-only, right?
>>
>> Moreover, developing something from the scratch woudl require enormous
>> amount of time in comparison with *just* providing higher-level D-ish
>> API for some of the already available GUI toolkit.
>>
>> On top of that, I believe that the best forces available within D-army
>> are now focused on improving DMD/Phobos, so don't know how many soldiers
>> are ready into going developing something new.
>>
>> Let me say, that when the time matures, I'm definitely to have some
>> solution more suitable for D and its advantages over e.g. C(++), but for
>> now I believe that just having some pragmatic solution in the form of
>> actively-worked-on project covering one of the {gtk,qt,wx}.
>>
>
> WPF is Windows only, and that is probably my biggest gripe with it
> outside of the numerous, and serious, implementation flaws. The closest
> you can get to WPF on Linux is Moonlight, and that is limited compared
> to what WPF can do. Argh!
>
> That is true, but there are already two projects out their to accomplish
> that, and I personally would have no problem with anyone who wanted to
> work on those instead, they are useful and allow something to be built
> in the near-term, which will significantly help D. But I, nor my
> company, can do much of anything short term in D. Specifically, we are
> still developing our projects in C# and our product life-cycles are very
> long (10+ years) and a GUI toolkit isn't the only thing missing in terms
> of what we need to port. So I am thinking much longer term here.
>
> It absolutely will take time, lots of it, but in the end, I feel that D
> will be much better positioned in the long-run to take serious market
> share if it has a state-of-the-art UI toolkit. Toolkits like wxD and DWT
> absolutely have a place, but the big players are moving away from that
> model of UI creation, as the news about QML demonstrates. QML is
> obviously early, but it's headed down the same path as JavaFX and
> WPF/Silverlight.
>
> The reason I want to start now is that it's still early in the evolution
> of declarative UI's. WPF is only 5 years old, but it took MS about 300
> programmers and 4 years to build, and it's the oldest implementation of
> that type of UI that I know of outside academia. Given how long it took,
> starting now is better than starting later. The earlier you show up to
> market with what people want, the bigger market share you grab. That's
> good for D. :-)

Not sure about that. If you start later, you can learn more from the 
mistakes of others.


> My intention is not to draw away any devs who could potentially work on
> DMD/Phobos, in fact I want them working hard on those because without
> them my work is pointless, and in some cases impossible (showstopper
> bugs and ICE's are rather annoying like that). I suspect that it'll be a
> case of "me, myself, and I" working on a declarative UI for D for quite
> some time. But at the same time, I want to continue to have
> conversations with the community at large, probably mostly about design
> and whatnot. If there are people who really want to help I won't turn
> them away, but I'll avoid actively recruiting to make sure that
> DMD/Phobos gets first pick, as they should. Sound good?

The history of D libraries is tragic -- there have been many ambitious 
projects, which have ended up being abandoned. (Actually I think this is 
pretty widespread in open source, not specific to D). I would hate for 
that list to get any longer.
The successful D projects have, as far as I know, always used a 
bottom-up approach.
So I would recommend to try to carve a small aspect off from the large 
GUI problem, and implement that. And do it so well that everyone wants 
to use it.

>
>>> Besides, why cover the same ground that those two projects are
>>> already covering? I could list all the pro's and con's that we've
>>> discovered in actual usage of WPF but I don't want to needlessly
>>> clutter up this thread which has little to do with UI. :-)
>>
>> Time & effort which are limited in D community right now?
>>
>
> That is legitimate assertion and GUI toolkits are among the most
> complicated undertakings a group can attempt to carry out.
>
>>> You can find me on IRC as LightBender and the email account I list
>>> here is actively monitored.
>>
>> I'm available as 'gour' on IRC.
>>
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Gour