The wd interface should be a permanent part of J from
now on. The J6 wd and the associated GUI design tool
made it very easy to create GUI-based J applications
that were reasonably portable between platforms. The
only major flaw was a lack of support for 64-bit
platforms.
When J7 came out with completely different interfaces,
I felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under me.
Why use J at all if one can't count on a stable
platform to work with? Java would then be a better
choice. Also, while I experimented a bit with JHS,
I never did anything with JGTK due to the lack of
user documentation. A few sample programs do not
constitute adequate documentation, nor does a
pointer to documentation for the C/C++ GTK API.
If J8 continues to support wd and the GUI design tool,
and these work on 64-bit platforms, then I will
seriously consider writing GUI-based applications
in J once again. But I'm not interested in playing
a constant game of catch-up with an ever-changing
platform, and I'm sure most other people feel the
same way.
--- Brian
On Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:26:01 +1300
Ric Sherlock <[email protected]> wrote:
The wd implementation vastly simplifies the GUI
landscape for J6/J7 users.
It is much easier to port existing apps to J8 and IMO
provides a simpler
and more powerful GUI design experience compared the old
J6 wd, while at
the same time being vastly more consistent across
platforms.
As I see it there are a couple of additional benefits of
the have in the J
IDE written using wd:
a) once the wd Qt interface becomes stable there should
be much less
reason to need to provide new binaries. Further
development/maintenance of
the ide/qt addon could then take place without any
requirement to install
new binaries each time, simply upgrading the addon using
Package Manager
would do the job.
b) It provides a proof-of-concept of the wd GUI
framework for a more
complex application, as well as a great source of
examples of how to use it
to create an application.
Assuming performance would be acceptable, maybe it's
something that could
be looked at for J8.1 or J9?
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:12 PM, chris burke
<[email protected]> wrote:
> how feasible it would be to write the ide using the wd
interface?
It could be done, though we would need to extend wd a
little.
However, I don't think there would be much benefit. With
earlier J
versions, we felt that having the IDE in J meant both
that the code would
be much simpler, and also easier for the end user to
customize. The first
no longer holds with Qt, i.e. the amount of source for
the Qt IDE is about
the same as the source for the old J wd IDE (and both
very much smaller
than for GTK). Also, we never really had end users
customizing the IDE.
One thing I do notice with Qt is that the system is
noticeably snappier
than in J6 wd and J7 GTK.
Incidentally, we didn't design it this way. Originally,
the Qt IDE had no
wd, and it was only because we wanted some simple
windows, e.g. for
viewmat, that we looked at it at all. Bill and I worked
on this for a few
days over Xmas, and to my surprise, found that
implementing wd would be
relatively straightforward.
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:26 PM, Ric Sherlock
<[email protected]> wrote:
> The wd interface for Qt seems to be rounding out
really well. It looks as
> though it is pretty fast and powerful as well as being
quite easy to use
> for J6 wd users.
> Currently the main part of the J Qtide is written
directly in C++. I'd be
> interested to hear how feasible it would be to write
the ide using the wd
> interface?
> What would be the downsides?
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see
http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see
http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see
http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
