Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
This has been an interesting discussion, and if you care feel free to continue. Summary: Qt proved quite suitable for the task. There was no deep reason to prefer it over anything else except for the fact that no other programming language - or process (with stdout|stdin pipe) - was involved. A colleague who is not a developer but knows how to program thought that learning yet another language for this task was too much. He jumped in before I could. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | o...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 9:14 PM, Nadav Har'El n...@math.technion.ac.ilwrote: This is a very important point. This is why I loved Tcl/Tk when I learned it in the mid 90s Second that. Tcl/Tk/wish was rather cool. I learned bits and pieces of it at the same time. I still say my GUI experience is zero - whatever i have is within the rounding errors. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org o...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
Here are a few comparisons. (Note that I always prefer inheriting the main
window and thus create a derived widget. This typically requires more code,
but in return you get a real widget that integrates seamlessly into the
widget system.)
Python gtk:
#!/usr/bin/python
import gtk
class HelloWorld(gtk.Window):
def button_clicked(self, data):
print Hello World!
def __init__(self):
gtk.Window.__init__(self, gtk.WINDOW_TOPLEVEL)
self.connect(destroy, gtk.main_quit)
button = gtk.Button(Press me)
button.connect(clicked, self.button_clicked)
button.show()
self.add(button)
HelloWorld().show()
gtk.main()
Vala:
using Gtk;
public class HelloWorld : Gtk.Window {
construct {
this.title = Hello World;
var button = new Button.with_label(Hello world);
button.clicked.connect( () = {
stdout.printf(Hello world!\n);
});
button.show();
this.add(button);
}
}
int main(string[] args) {
Gtk.init(ref args);
var hello_world = new HelloWorld();
hello_world.show();
Gtk.main();
return 0;
}
For pyside / PyQt see:
http://www.harshj.com/2009/04/26/the-pyqt-intro/
It carries some additional noise due to the python vs qt bindings.
Regarding tcl, I once wrote a gtk/Tcl quick and dirty prototyping tool,
that may be of interest to someone. See:
http://gemshell.sourceforge.net/
Regards,
Dov
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 9:14 PM, Nadav Har'El n...@math.technion.ac.ilwrote:
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012, Dov Grobgeld wrote about Re: suggestions sought for
a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype:
very nicely reflects the beauty of the GObject system. Especially in C it
is easy to miss that because of the very tedious syntax you need to use,
e.g. to define an derived class. In Vala the syntax is very concise.
This is a very important point. This is why I loved Tcl/Tk when I
learned it in the mid 90s - the code to create the gui was so compact,
so elegant - the complete opposite of Xlib, Xaw and Motif, each
requiring you to write dozens of lines for every simple task.
For example, here is a program in TCL/TK which shows a hello button
which outputs hi when pressed. How does it look in your favorite
gui language?
#!/usr/bin/wish
button .a -text hello -command puts hi
pack .a
For the curious, the first command creates a button .a - in TK, widgets
are hierarchical and have hierarchical pathnames, with . separating
components, so .a is a child of the toplevel window . with the name
a. The TCL language is a simple language resembling the shell (but with
interesting improvements, which I can eleborate if anyone cares).
The second command packs .a in its parent, i.e., the toplevel window
.. packing means that you ask to have .a be placed and sized
automatically.
I'm still saddened by the fate of TCL/TK. I still blame Sun for what
happened to it. sun bought TCL/TK and its inventor John Ousterhout
with intentions of turning TCL into a browser scripting language, and
then burried TCL when Sun decided to go with Java instead (though
interestingly, Java NEVER become a language of the web). I'm sad,
because I was really a big fan of TCL and TK. I still am.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Regarding the fact that it compiles to C, as long as I have an automatic
build system, what do I care what it compiles to? But most other high
language bindings to Gtk are just as easy to use (e.g. Python, Lua, or
Haskell).
I'm curious, why does it need to compile at all? Why didn't they just
write an interpreter, like TCL did?
Nadav.
--
Nadav Har'El| Thursday, Jul 19 2012, 1 Av
5772
n...@math.technion.ac.il
|-
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |error compiling committee.c: too many
http://nadav.harel.org.il |arguments to function
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Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Dov Grobgeld dov.grobg...@gmail.comwrote:
Here are a few comparisons. (Note that I always prefer inheriting the main
window and thus create a derived widget. This typically requires more code,
but in return you get a real widget that integrates seamlessly into the
widget system.)
Python gtk:
#!/usr/bin/python
import gtk
class HelloWorld(gtk.Window):
def button_clicked(self, data):
print Hello World!
def __init__(self):
gtk.Window.__init__(self, gtk.WINDOW_TOPLEVEL)
self.connect(destroy, gtk.main_quit)
button = gtk.Button(Press me)
button.connect(clicked, self.button_clicked)
button.show()
self.add(button)
HelloWorld().show()
gtk.main()
Vala:
using Gtk;
public class HelloWorld : Gtk.Window {
construct {
this.title = Hello World;
var button = new Button.with_label(Hello world);
button.clicked.connect( () = {
stdout.printf(Hello world!\n);
});
button.show();
this.add(button);
}
}
int main(string[] args) {
Gtk.init(ref args);
var hello_world = new HelloWorld();
hello_world.show();
Gtk.main();
return 0;
}
For pyside / PyQt see:
http://www.harshj.com/2009/04/26/the-pyqt-intro/
It carries some additional noise due to the python vs qt bindings.
Regarding tcl, I once wrote a gtk/Tcl quick and dirty prototyping tool,
that may be of interest to someone. See:
http://gemshell.sourceforge.net/
Way too much code. In Lazarus you do not need to write this code, unless
you really want to.
Object Pascal is not a dynamic language but a static language, so you can
not compare the two.
Even TP was very complex language, and today's language contain even more
features, generics, mixin, and a lot more.
The API of both Lazarus and Delphi is very close to Qt (Qt came after
Delphi).
But today both with Lazarus and Delphi you can create native code and GUI
depends on the platform.
So you do not need to know GTK, Qt, WinAPI, Android API (yes you can
compile native code to run in JVM), iOS etc...
Except of specific stuff. You just use the API. when you compile to/in
windows it will be WinAPI native, no GTK or Qt.
On Linux, you can use GTK or Qt (in compile time you choose it).
On Mac it will be native to that, on BeOS it will native to BeOS etc..
Have a look at my program (not very simple one):
https://github.com/ik5/display-quotes
Only one method with some GUI code inside for an open dialog, that i did
not want to do in a design time. everything else is about the logic, not
about the GUI.
If you will check it closely, I even have code that that add extra features
if you compile it to GTK, and extra code for Windows based requirements,
only one line of code for it.
I binded there the libnotify library arrive from Gnome/GTK. You can see the
code itself.
When you use Python, you do not use GTK, you use a way that is suitable to
Python that at the end translate into GTK.
When you use Vala, it again translate into C that is translated into
machine code.
When you use Lazarus, you use API, that call the native UI methods (like
with Python), but translated into native machine code (elf, exe, class
files).
You have a lot of components and addons in Lazarus, and it is very simple
to write code with it that will work everywhere.
But people still think that working hard and dealing with too much
dependencies on run time for normal users, is the way to go,
and learning 10 technologies to write one program, is the proper way,
or that you do not need a fast executable (the fastest in bench-marking
then GCC, intel etc.. ),
then please, by all means, keep on going the wrong way ...
Just remember that C#, Go and even C11 copied from Object Pascal most of
it's features ...
My last battle in this thread on the subject.
Regards,
Dov
Ido
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 9:14 PM, Nadav Har'El n...@math.technion.ac.ilwrote:
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012, Dov Grobgeld wrote about Re: suggestions sought
for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype:
very nicely reflects the beauty of the GObject system. Especially in C
it
is easy to miss that because of the very tedious syntax you need to use,
e.g. to define an derived class. In Vala the syntax is very concise.
This is a very important point. This is why I loved Tcl/Tk when I
learned it in the mid 90s - the code to create the gui was so compact,
so elegant - the complete opposite of Xlib, Xaw and Motif, each
requiring you to write dozens of lines for every simple task.
For example, here is a program in TCL/TK which shows a hello button
which outputs hi when pressed. How does it look in your favorite
gui language?
#!/usr/bin/wish
button .a -text hello -command puts hi
pack .a
For the curious, the first command creates a button .a - in TK, widgets
are hierarchical and have hierarchical
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
The advantage of using Qt or Gtk compared with some of the other gui toolkits mentioned (fltk, Tcl/Tk, SDL, or Matlab GUI) are that they are complete (lots of widgets, internationalization and localization support etc) if the prototype turns into something bigger than was initially envisioned. To often have I seen tools that were written like oh, its's only for me and then a company is trying to figure out how to deploy and support the tool. I therefore thing it is worth taking the time to learn complexity of one of these GUI's, and then use it. The language is a separate issue from the GUI. The difference between Qt and Gtk is that Qt was from the beginning written to be tighly coupled with C++, whereas gtk (actually the glib model) was written so that it is easy to bind it to various languages. There is even a special GObject (the base class of gtk) dedicated language. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_%28programming_language%29 . True, there are some bindings to Qt, e.g. the official python binding PySide, but the huge amount of bindings to gtk shows that it is a much easier task. In short, decide a language and a toolkit. Take time to learn it. It is well worth your time. Regards, Dov On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:29 PM, yochai yoc...@titat.info wrote: Shlomi, I gave it as an idea as I understood he doesn't need a full GUI or anything with a shiny look but to print a lot of data very fast. I'm sorry if I miss-understood anything. Yochai On 07/19/2012 12:12 PM, Shlomi Fish wrote: Hi all, On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:02 PM, yochai yoc...@titat.info wrote: Sorry, I thought it will be clear what I'm speaking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_DirectMedia_Layer I would recommend against SDL, because creating a decent GUI with it will require a lot of work, and on top of it will give you a giant window of raw graphics in the screen, which isn't very user-friendly or impressive. SDL is good enough for games, but not for a GUI application. There used to be a GUI library for SDL called ParaGUI but its home page is currently down. I'm not sure if it could fix all of SDL's limitations in regards to its usability as a GUI platform. Regards, -- Shlomi Fish On 07/19/2012 11:37 AM, Omer Zak wrote: On Thu, 2012-07-19 at 10:55 +0300, yochai wrote: Hey, It isn't the first idea that comes to mind but what about SDL ? How about giving an URL to a Website or a Wikipedia article, which describes the specific SDL that you refer to? When searching both resources, Google returned irrelevant links and Wikipedia was rather ambiguous. Thanks, --- Omer ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Dov Grobgeld dov.grobg...@gmail.comwrote: The advantage of using Qt or Gtk compared with some of the other gui toolkits mentioned (fltk, Tcl/Tk, SDL, or Matlab GUI) are that they are complete (lots of widgets, internationalization and localization support etc) if the prototype turns into something bigger than was initially envisioned. To often have I seen tools that were written like oh, its's only for me and then a company is trying to figure out how to deploy and support the tool. I therefore thing it is worth taking the time to learn complexity of one of these GUI's, and then use it. The language is a separate issue from the GUI. The difference between Qt and Gtk is that Qt was from the beginning written to be tighly coupled with C++, whereas gtk (actually the glib model) was written so that it is easy to bind it to various languages. There is even a special GObject (the base class of gtk) dedicated language. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_%28programming_language%29 . True, there are some bindings to Qt, e.g. the official python binding PySide, but the huge amount of bindings to gtk shows that it is a much easier task. In short, decide a language and a toolkit. Take time to learn it. It is well worth your time. The thing is, that the approach I offered - Lazarus, contain support both to Qt and GTK, but you do not care about it in any way, you just focus on your task, on the libraries at hand. The libraries are only matter on compile and deployment time, not on coding, you do not really use any GTK or Qt code, but focus on an API that exists above this. The fight aginst Qt vs GTK is nice when you need to focus yourself on lower level development, not with tools that simplify things to you. Vala, is a very stupid idea. it's a C# like language that is translated into C and then built a native code. With Lazarus, you program in a real programming language, and instead of using a middleware, you just cod your code, and the GUI is designed without any line of code (unless you have to, or just want to do it like that). Regards, Dov Ido On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:29 PM, yochai yoc...@titat.info wrote: Shlomi, I gave it as an idea as I understood he doesn't need a full GUI or anything with a shiny look but to print a lot of data very fast. I'm sorry if I miss-understood anything. Yochai On 07/19/2012 12:12 PM, Shlomi Fish wrote: Hi all, On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:02 PM, yochai yoc...@titat.info wrote: Sorry, I thought it will be clear what I'm speaking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_DirectMedia_Layer I would recommend against SDL, because creating a decent GUI with it will require a lot of work, and on top of it will give you a giant window of raw graphics in the screen, which isn't very user-friendly or impressive. SDL is good enough for games, but not for a GUI application. There used to be a GUI library for SDL called ParaGUI but its home page is currently down. I'm not sure if it could fix all of SDL's limitations in regards to its usability as a GUI platform. Regards, -- Shlomi Fish On 07/19/2012 11:37 AM, Omer Zak wrote: On Thu, 2012-07-19 at 10:55 +0300, yochai wrote: Hey, It isn't the first idea that comes to mind but what about SDL ? How about giving an URL to a Website or a Wikipedia article, which describes the specific SDL that you refer to? When searching both resources, Google returned irrelevant links and Wikipedia was rather ambiguous. Thanks, --- Omer ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
Hi Dov, On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Dov Grobgeld dov.grobg...@gmail.com wrote: The advantage of using Qt or Gtk compared with some of the other gui toolkits mentioned (fltk, Tcl/Tk, SDL, or Matlab GUI) are that they are You should not lump SDL together with FLTK, Tcl/Tk and Matlab GUI, because it is not a GUI library, not intended to be one. Reading from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_DirectMedia_Layer : Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is a cross-platform, free and open source multimedia library written in C that presents a simple interface to various platforms' graphics, sound, and input devices. SDL has the word layer in its title because it is actually a wrapper around operating-system-specific functions. The main purpose of SDL is to provide a common framework for accessing these functions. For further functionality beyond this goal, many libraries have been created to work on top of SDL.[1] complete (lots of widgets, internationalization and localization support etc) if the prototype turns into something bigger than was initially envisioned. To often have I seen tools that were written like oh, its's only for me and then a company is trying to figure out how to deploy and support the tool. I therefore thing it is worth taking the time to learn complexity of one of these GUI's, and then use it. Right, many one-off tools tend to outgrow their original purpose. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- -- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Electrical Engineering studies. In the Technion. Been there. Done that. Forgot a lot. Remember too much. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:50 PM, ik ido...@gmail.com wrote: Vala, is a very stupid idea. it's a C# like language that is translated into C and then built a native code. I disagree. I am not familiar with C# so I can't comment on that, but Vala very nicely reflects the beauty of the GObject system. Especially in C it is easy to miss that because of the very tedious syntax you need to use, e.g. to define an derived class. In Vala the syntax is very concise. Regarding the fact that it compiles to C, as long as I have an automatic build system, what do I care what it compiles to? But most other high language bindings to Gtk are just as easy to use (e.g. Python, Lua, or Haskell). With Lazarus, you program in a real programming language, and instead of using a middleware, you just cod your code, and the GUI is designed without any line of code (unless you have to, or just want to do it like that). Sorry, I'm not familiar with Lazaurus, but it seems to be based on Pascal. Unless it's Pascal dialect has changed completely since my TurboPascal days, it is still a language that is inferior to e.g. Python or Vala. Don't know what you mean by not having to design the GUI. If you want it to look in a certain way you have to specify that. Regards, Dov Ido On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:29 PM, yochai yoc...@titat.info wrote: Shlomi, I gave it as an idea as I understood he doesn't need a full GUI or anything with a shiny look but to print a lot of data very fast. I'm sorry if I miss-understood anything. Yochai On 07/19/2012 12:12 PM, Shlomi Fish wrote: Hi all, On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:02 PM, yochai yoc...@titat.info wrote: Sorry, I thought it will be clear what I'm speaking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_DirectMedia_Layer I would recommend against SDL, because creating a decent GUI with it will require a lot of work, and on top of it will give you a giant window of raw graphics in the screen, which isn't very user-friendly or impressive. SDL is good enough for games, but not for a GUI application. There used to be a GUI library for SDL called ParaGUI but its home page is currently down. I'm not sure if it could fix all of SDL's limitations in regards to its usability as a GUI platform. Regards, -- Shlomi Fish On 07/19/2012 11:37 AM, Omer Zak wrote: On Thu, 2012-07-19 at 10:55 +0300, yochai wrote: Hey, It isn't the first idea that comes to mind but what about SDL ? How about giving an URL to a Website or a Wikipedia article, which describes the specific SDL that you refer to? When searching both resources, Google returned irrelevant links and Wikipedia was rather ambiguous. Thanks, --- Omer ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
Hi Ido, On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:50 PM, ik ido...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Dov Grobgeld dov.grobg...@gmail.com wrote: The advantage of using Qt or Gtk compared with some of the other gui toolkits mentioned (fltk, Tcl/Tk, SDL, or Matlab GUI) are that they are complete (lots of widgets, internationalization and localization support etc) if the prototype turns into something bigger than was initially envisioned. To often have I seen tools that were written like oh, its's only for me and then a company is trying to figure out how to deploy and support the tool. I therefore thing it is worth taking the time to learn complexity of one of these GUI's, and then use it. The language is a separate issue from the GUI. The difference between Qt and Gtk is that Qt was from the beginning written to be tighly coupled with C++, whereas gtk (actually the glib model) was written so that it is easy to bind it to various languages. There is even a special GObject (the base class of gtk) dedicated language. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_%28programming_language%29 . True, there are some bindings to Qt, e.g. the official python binding PySide, but the huge amount of bindings to gtk shows that it is a much easier task. In short, decide a language and a toolkit. Take time to learn it. It is well worth your time. The thing is, that the approach I offered - Lazarus, contain support both to Qt and GTK, but you do not care about it in any way, you just focus on your task, on the libraries at hand. The libraries are only matter on compile and deployment time, not on coding, you do not really use any GTK or Qt code, but focus on an API that exists above this. The problem is that Lazarus is based on Free Pascal, which may have problem wrapping C++ code which is what Oleg wanted originally. The fight aginst Qt vs GTK is nice when you need to focus yourself on lower level development, not with tools that simplify things to you. Fight? Vala, is a very stupid idea. it's a C# like language that is translated into C and then built a native code. Why is it a stupid idea? I recall re-implementing a small Perl program (which ran too slowly) in Vala, and it performed much better, so I was happy. I have not done any GUI programming in Vala, but translating something to C is a valid approach. With Lazarus, you program in a real programming language, and instead of using a middleware, you just cod your code, and the GUI is designed without any line of code (unless you have to, or just want to do it like that). Are you implying that Vala is not a real programming language? Regards, -- Shlomi Fish -- -- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Electrical Engineering studies. In the Technion. Been there. Done that. Forgot a lot. Remember too much. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Shlomi Fish shlo...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Ido, On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:50 PM, ik ido...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Dov Grobgeld dov.grobg...@gmail.com wrote: The advantage of using Qt or Gtk compared with some of the other gui toolkits mentioned (fltk, Tcl/Tk, SDL, or Matlab GUI) are that they are complete (lots of widgets, internationalization and localization support etc) if the prototype turns into something bigger than was initially envisioned. To often have I seen tools that were written like oh, its's only for me and then a company is trying to figure out how to deploy and support the tool. I therefore thing it is worth taking the time to learn complexity of one of these GUI's, and then use it. The language is a separate issue from the GUI. The difference between Qt and Gtk is that Qt was from the beginning written to be tighly coupled with C++, whereas gtk (actually the glib model) was written so that it is easy to bind it to various languages. There is even a special GObject (the base class of gtk) dedicated language. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_%28programming_language%29 . True, there are some bindings to Qt, e.g. the official python binding PySide, but the huge amount of bindings to gtk shows that it is a much easier task. In short, decide a language and a toolkit. Take time to learn it. It is well worth your time. The thing is, that the approach I offered - Lazarus, contain support both to Qt and GTK, but you do not care about it in any way, you just focus on your task, on the libraries at hand. The libraries are only matter on compile and deployment time, not on coding, you do not really use any GTK or Qt code, but focus on an API that exists above this. The problem is that Lazarus is based on Free Pascal, which may have problem wrapping C++ code which is what Oleg wanted originally. I might have misread it, but as I understand, he thinking on C++ because of the GUI. The fight aginst Qt vs GTK is nice when you need to focus yourself on lower level development, not with tools that simplify things to you. Fight? All other suggestions are either Qt vs GTK vs FLTK etc... I offered to ignore the type of all of it. Vala, is a very stupid idea. it's a C# like language that is translated into C and then built a native code. Why is it a stupid idea? I recall re-implementing a small Perl program (which ran too slowly) in Vala, and it performed much better, so I was happy. I have not done any GUI programming in Vala, but translating something to C is a valid approach. If what you understood is true, and he is looking for a C++ solutions, why do you keep offering Python or Vala to him ? If I understand it, then my solution is better, instead of using a language to help use a toolkit, I offer a language with tools that helps you develop GUI without the hassle of choosing the GUI toolkit, but to focus on your work, and think in DRY land ... If he choose Glade with GTK, he needs to start to think in grid like way of writing. If he chooses Qt with Qt-Develop, he will need to write a template, and then focus on understanding Qt I offer something different, different thinking, even know, without any knowledge of gui development, or even the programming language, a simple window, edit box, a button and a simple menu will take him less then 10 minutes. When he'll know to use it, it will take him 3-5 minutes tops. With Lazarus, you program in a real programming language, and instead of using a middleware, you just cod your code, and the GUI is designed without any line of code (unless you have to, or just want to do it like that). Are you implying that Vala is not a real programming language? *Vala* is an object-oriented http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented programming language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language with a self-hosting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting compilerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilerthat generates C http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28programming_language%29 code and uses the GObject http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GObject system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_%28programming_language%29 It's a descriptive language for C, that was built to help you develop GUI for GTK, and looks too much like C# (it's actually cool language C#, much better then Java, but that's off topic). Regards, -- Shlomi Fish -- -- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Electrical Engineering studies. In the Technion. Been there. Done that. Forgot a lot. Remember too much. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Dov Grobgeld dov.grobg...@gmail.comwrote: The advantage of using Qt or Gtk compared with some of the other gui toolkits mentioned (fltk, Tcl/Tk, SDL, or Matlab GUI) are that they are complete (lots of widgets, internationalization and localization support etc) if the prototype turns into something bigger than was initially envisioned. To often have I seen tools that were written like oh, its's only for me and then a company is trying to figure out how to deploy and support the tool. I therefore thing it is worth taking the time to learn complexity of one of these GUI's, and then use it. I understand all of this and this is exactly why I stressed in the original post that I was sure it would be thrown away. The reason is that our product includes a very sophisticated GUI that is Windows/.NET and I do not see either the company or our customers to switch to, say, Linux/Qt in the foreseeable future. So whatever we do in a demo/mockup/prototype will have to be re-implemented in the current GUI framework. What we do not currently have is skilled GUI development resources to participate in the prototyping effort, so integrating the prototype with the existing GUI is out of the question. Therefore feature-completeness is not a consideration in this particular case, though I fully support the philosophy in general. Thanks to all those who have already made suggestions, and keep them coming. I cannot keep up in real time (i.e., each time something gets mentioned, look it up, evaluate, respond), so my lack of specific reactions does not mean I am not paying close attention. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org o...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
Both Gtk and Qt work seamlessly under Windows, and launching your tool as an external process might be feasible. (I did something similar at Orbotech about 15y ago when I wrote an external tool in Perl/Tk that exactly matched the colors and fonts of the external C++/Motif based GUI. In a certain scenario the tool would be launched and as it was frameless it snugly overlayed part of the GUI. When the interaction was done it was popped down, and the customers had not any clue that they had been interacting with an external tool. :-) Regards, Dov On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Oleg Goldshmidt p...@goldshmidt.org wrote: On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Dov Grobgeld dov.grobg...@gmail.comwrote: The advantage of using Qt or Gtk compared with some of the other gui toolkits mentioned (fltk, Tcl/Tk, SDL, or Matlab GUI) are that they are complete (lots of widgets, internationalization and localization support etc) if the prototype turns into something bigger than was initially envisioned. To often have I seen tools that were written like oh, its's only for me and then a company is trying to figure out how to deploy and support the tool. I therefore thing it is worth taking the time to learn complexity of one of these GUI's, and then use it. I understand all of this and this is exactly why I stressed in the original post that I was sure it would be thrown away. The reason is that our product includes a very sophisticated GUI that is Windows/.NET and I do not see either the company or our customers to switch to, say, Linux/Qt in the foreseeable future. So whatever we do in a demo/mockup/prototype will have to be re-implemented in the current GUI framework. What we do not currently have is skilled GUI development resources to participate in the prototyping effort, so integrating the prototype with the existing GUI is out of the question. Therefore feature-completeness is not a consideration in this particular case, though I fully support the philosophy in general. Thanks to all those who have already made suggestions, and keep them coming. I cannot keep up in real time (i.e., each time something gets mentioned, look it up, evaluate, respond), so my lack of specific reactions does not mean I am not paying close attention. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org o...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012, Dov Grobgeld wrote about Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype: very nicely reflects the beauty of the GObject system. Especially in C it is easy to miss that because of the very tedious syntax you need to use, e.g. to define an derived class. In Vala the syntax is very concise. This is a very important point. This is why I loved Tcl/Tk when I learned it in the mid 90s - the code to create the gui was so compact, so elegant - the complete opposite of Xlib, Xaw and Motif, each requiring you to write dozens of lines for every simple task. For example, here is a program in TCL/TK which shows a hello button which outputs hi when pressed. How does it look in your favorite gui language? #!/usr/bin/wish button .a -text hello -command puts hi pack .a For the curious, the first command creates a button .a - in TK, widgets are hierarchical and have hierarchical pathnames, with . separating components, so .a is a child of the toplevel window . with the name a. The TCL language is a simple language resembling the shell (but with interesting improvements, which I can eleborate if anyone cares). The second command packs .a in its parent, i.e., the toplevel window .. packing means that you ask to have .a be placed and sized automatically. I'm still saddened by the fate of TCL/TK. I still blame Sun for what happened to it. sun bought TCL/TK and its inventor John Ousterhout with intentions of turning TCL into a browser scripting language, and then burried TCL when Sun decided to go with Java instead (though interestingly, Java NEVER become a language of the web). I'm sad, because I was really a big fan of TCL and TK. I still am. Sic transit gloria mundi. Regarding the fact that it compiles to C, as long as I have an automatic build system, what do I care what it compiles to? But most other high language bindings to Gtk are just as easy to use (e.g. Python, Lua, or Haskell). I'm curious, why does it need to compile at all? Why didn't they just write an interpreter, like TCL did? Nadav. -- Nadav Har'El| Thursday, Jul 19 2012, 1 Av 5772 n...@math.technion.ac.il |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |error compiling committee.c: too many http://nadav.harel.org.il |arguments to function ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012, ik wrote about Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype: *Vala* is an object-oriented http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented programming language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language with a self-hosting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting compilerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilerthat generates C http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28programming_language%29 code and uses the GObject http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GObject system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_%28programming_language%29 I looked at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_%28programming_language%29 and see that Vala isn't a simple for scripting GTK (which I assumed from the original description), but something completely different: It is a new *compiled* language with a syntax resembling C#. The fact that Vala is compiled into C and only from there to machine code, is immaterial. I still remember the first C++ compiler I used, in 1988, compiled C++ code to C (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cfront). In that era, compiling into C was actually a fashion. Lex and Yacc also compile into C, and so and so did quite a lot of other languages. Why has this changed? Mainly, gcc is to blame. Gcc is open-source and more front ends can be written to it, so compilers for Fortran, Ada, Java, Go, and probably other languages were written as Gcc frontends. If Gcc didn't exist, or was closed-source, my guess is that all these compiler-writers would have compiled into *C*, and let GCC the C compiler handle the task of converting this C into machine code on a hundred different architectures. If what you understood is true, and he is looking for a C++ solutions, why do you keep offering Python or Vala to him ? Because it makes for an interesting discussion :-) I'm sure Oleg is capable of picking what he needs from this discussion. -- Nadav Har'El| Thursday, Jul 19 2012, 1 Av 5772 n...@math.technion.ac.il |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |In Fortran, God is real unless declared http://nadav.harel.org.il |an integer. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 9:14 PM, Nadav Har'El n...@math.technion.ac.ilwrote: I'm still saddened by the fate of TCL/TK. I still blame Sun for what happened to it. sun bought TCL/TK and its inventor John Ousterhout with intentions of turning TCL into a browser scripting language, and then burried TCL when Sun decided to go with Java instead (though interestingly, Java NEVER become a language of the web). I'm sad, because I was really a big fan of TCL and TK. I still am. Sic transit gloria mundi. FYI, TCL is still the standard scripting language in VLSI EDA tools, when an embedded language is needed: Synopsys use it for Design Compiler and probably other Physical Synthesis tools and maybe even DVE (their front end GUI for design verification) Magma (now part of synopsys) IBM Booledozer (part of their ASIC toolset) Modelsim simulation tools Mentor Graphics Cadence In fact, it's hard to find an EDA tool vendor NOT embedding a TCL interpreter in his toolset. Udi ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
