Daniel Sadilek wrote:
Right, too. Really, "targeting" Qt(4) is a perfectly reasonable
choice. Actually,
I have no clue what's the best option - but I fear committing to one
particular
toolkit.
I see your point. However, independence of the toolkit ranks second
for me. Having a platform independent API with which you can build
full-featured professional looking GUIs ranks first.
It seems to me that here are two groups. One wants a slick API for
3D-OpenGL-game-development and the other a comparatively big API with
lots of standard-widgets for standard-looking desktop-applications.
Perhaps we should distinguish between the requirements these two
groups have? I suppose that two different APIs are necessary.
There are at least 3 camps:
- put OpenGL windows on screen, no widgets. For game developers who
don't want a bunch of extraneous stuff in their way. Not much to
discuss about requirements here. We've got 3 people working on it, and
we all know what we're doing well enough. We welcome anyone who
actually wants to cut code.
- minimalist GUI, minimal core set of the most useful widgets. Intended
to be simple, portable, and sufficient for modest GUI apps. Not
intended to be fully featured. Not important to have native look and
feel. Has many different GUI toolkits as backends. This is Felix's
plan for conquering the universe. I fear he won't actually secure the
support resources for more than 1 platform, in practice. Multi-platform
will exist as proof-of-concept, but outside the de facto area of core
strength, the builds will suck and be forever broken. I point to
Chicken itself as evidence, pre-CMake. MinGW simply didn't get the
love. MSVC had 2 different build methods and different path conventions
than the Unix builds. It took 1 year to pave all that over. People who
come along to do that much gratuitous refactoring are the exception
rather than the rule, i.e. I am insane.
- maximalist GUI. Maximal number of widgets, fully featured, can handle
any enterprise class problem you have in mind. Native look and feel.
"Fear of committment" is silly here. WxWidgets, GTK+, and Qt have been
dealing with the "heavy duty and portable" problem for the past decade.
If you want to be fully featured, you can't do better. Pick 1 and wrap it.
Also there's an undercurrent of research and exoticism in some people's
posts, with regards to event handling and other would-be GUI features.
This could skew people into yet more camps.
R&D is a non-issue for OpenGL windowing. We're not going to do enough
to get ourselves into trouble. I'm sure Thu will cook up some event
handling experiments, and at some point I'll try my own hand at it.
Don't know what John has in mind here.
For Felix's portaGUI, the R&D impulse will cause a lot of design
discussion. Hope it sheds more light than heat. I don't expect all
designers to last through the process. The direction taken will not be
equally fascinating to all parties, and some will lose interest.
For a maximalist GUI, the R&D impulse is counter to getting the job
done. WxWidgets, GTK+, and Qt are exceedingly mature projects with
gigantic user communities. "Not Invented Here" isn't going to get
anyone anywhere. People have to value the pragmatic result, not the fun
of doing their own R&D.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
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