On Jan 19, 2008, at 10:39 PM, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
On 19/01/2008, Damien Gerard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Projects work on these 3 platform without any defines, and they are
quite complex. And the current LCL solves those issues too.
So what fpGUI brings to me ?
When we started using LCL just over 2 years ago we had lots of issue.
GTK1, GTK2 and Win32 were all at different levels of stability. This
made it near impossible for use to develop software to run
consistantly under Linux and Windows. Our goal was not to have
IFDEF's in our code (which we had in Delphi and Kylix) and due to our
clients (250+ franchisees with 20+ computers each) being able to run
Linux and Windows side-by-side things needed to work the same.
LCL didn't fulfill either of those goals. We split our development
team in two. One half developing under Linux and the under half under
Windows. This would have ensured our product always ran the same on
both platforms. We picked up many issues in the components from not
being able to set background colors on forms (this worked under
Windows but not under Linux) to not resetting colors on components
(still a issue in mantis) etc.. We fixed many issues or found
workarounds to them. Some issues we couldn't fix. Our product wasn't
overly complex either. We simply tried to do want we always did under
Delphi and Kylix, but couldn't.
Then another issue was having our code being broken after getting svn
updates. No fault of the Lazarus developers! :)
At which point we decided to find a permanent solution. We evaluated a
project I started (fpGUI) to see if it could work for us. After a
month of prototyping we got the green light with fpGUI. Our product
now behaves in a consistant manner under all platforms, it looks
almost native under Win98, Win2000 or WinXP (with original theme). We
now have full control over painting components, so can make it look
exactly like we want. Soon we will implement full theming support to
detect GTK2, KDE and Windows XP themes.
fpGUI has been a great success for use. And best of all, we still get
to use Lazarus (IDE portion, not LCL).
Oki I see now. However, would it not be better to help the Lazarus
team ?
But I can understand it is faster to dev a specific one.
As a side note:
We did ask many of our clients what they thought about a product not
looking 100% like the OS. They didn't mind at all. There is no
consistant look under Linux anyways. Plus if Microsoft can bring way
out UI's to the masses (all Office versions, Windows Media Player
etc...) and everybody is fine with it, why can't we. At least ours
looks a lot closer to the native OS look.
That's the problem actually. It still was the case a few ago but now
the mind has changed.
And personaly, I hate apps with both win95 and XP controls in the same
app, even in two separated app. It is really disgracefull. It is one
of the reason I like OS X.
It is worst under Vista with the new theme and the old 95 buttons
style. How ugly
As for the feel of the application - their answer was that if it acts
or behaves in kinda the same way its fine. And these were all answers
from end users, not developers.
I think it depends of end users. Because We would not make the deal
with them with not a proper GUI.
Anyway, if you use themes, I don't think it is a real problem for fpGUI.
But, how performance should be better with custom painting instead of
native controls (with partial refresh of the windows, etc) ?
Two another question :
- Will you really take the good theme on Win32/64 and UniXes used by
the system (KDE,GTK2) ?
- Do you plan a OS X Version ?
--
Damien Gerard
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Le temps n'a pas d'importance. Seul le code est important
-- (f00ty)
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