Hi,

> Am 22.05.2021 um 11:41 schrieb أسامة مخزوم <[email protected]>:
> 
> Well, you seem to be on my side but in anthoer corner

:)

The question will be which corner finds the best adoption by the broader 
community of C++ programmers. What they really need or are missing. Because we 
need adopters.

> When we are talking about Gnustep outside objc view, developers has one main 
> benefit: gnustep libraries that provide portable and rich libraries as a 
> framework. as a programmer i like it  but try to avoid objective-c and 
> objective-c++ even more. gnustep ui are pretty cool to port wxWidgets or even 
> tk into its backend.  but why not to make this STEP more stright and provide 
> some wrapper/binding to c++? So anyone can later do whatever he want using a 
> c++ syntax without getting messed in objective-c++ every project. 

Hm. Maybe we should clarify the corners first.

My proposal is to use the wxWidgets API in C++. Implementing the wxWidgets API 
can likely be done in objc++ - not much different from Cocoa. The result should 
be some libwxgnustep...

This means that C++ programmers can simply link agains this wxWidgets wrappers 
by using plain C++.
They don't see objc++. Only those developers who develop wxWidgets wrapping for 
GNUstep have to care about.

To give an example, a hello world: 
https://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.0/overview_helloworld.html

A C++ programmer obviously (I have never written code in wxWidgets, but it is 
obvious what is going on) uses C++ classes like wxApp, wxFrame, wxMenu and 
functions like wxMessageBox() or SetStatusText().
These are provided by the wxWidget libs.

A GNUstep wxWidgets wrapper would of course be written in objc++, but compiled 
only once into the wrapper library.
It would translate these classes and function calls into ObjC-messages for 
GNUstep GUI and Base. For example I imagine that wxMessageBox() could open some 
NSPanel or the wxMenu method AppendSeparator() would translate into [menu 
addItem:[NSMenu separatorItem]]. 

The result would be that programmers can write in pure C++ for wxWidgets, link 
to the GNUstep wrapper and system and run the Apps on some GNUstep based 
desktop.

This would be my corner of thinking :)

Or do you generally think about something else?

> 
> Objc++ is something evil when it comes to syntax and code readabilty: two 
> languages, many restricts to merge, and a strange convention . theorically 
> you can anything possible using this latter, but its too ugly to people to 
> handle it.

Fully agree. It should only be used to write Wrappers in either direction, e.g. 
making ObjC frameworks available to C++ programmers and making C++ libraries 
available to ObjC programmers.

> That's why i would like to go further and make gnustep accesible outside 
> using objective-c++ from the application-developers and other programmer

Yes, wxWidgets provide pure C++ classes to programmers and hide objc++.

So maybe we are not even in different corners?

And the key question is what C++ developers really want to see if GNUstep is 
wrapped. It is a little difficult to find them here on this list, but maybe 
some reader is "living in both worlds" and can comment.

BR and thanks,
Nikolaus


> 
> On Sat, May 15, 2021, 6:15 PM H. Nikolaus Schaller <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> Hi Usama and all,
> any thoughts on my suggestions?
> 
> BR,
> Nikolaus
> 
> > Am 11.05.2021 um 14:24 schrieb H. Nikolaus Schaller <[email protected] 
> > <mailto:[email protected]>>:
> > 
> > 
> >> Am 11.05.2021 um 13:48 schrieb Usama makhzoum <[email protected] 
> >> <mailto:[email protected]>>:
> >> 
> >> 
> >> On 5/10/21 11:20 PM, H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>> 
> >>>> Am 10.05.2021 um 20:58 schrieb أسامة مخزوم <[email protected] 
> >>>> <mailto:[email protected]>>:
> >>>> 
> >>>> hi all
> >>>> 
> >>>> I am thinking of a C++11 wrapper for base, gui and other libraries, may 
> >>>> be it is easier to do than another PL (because of objective-c++ 
> >>>> existence). however, i want to hear from you: I would like to have 
> >>>> opinions and whether if there was a attemp to do this (with c++98, for 
> >>>> example).
> >>>> 
> >>>> This also can give gnustep (another step). macosX developers always 
> >>>> searches for c++ wrappers around cocoa and friends. before they enforced 
> >>>> deeply to objc and swift, they simply wishing the last wish "I hope that 
> >>>> someone did it". so maybe a c++ wrapper can make gnutep famous for the 
> >>>> mac development, rather.
> >>> On macOS C++ is not the primary language (except for kernel drivers). It 
> >>> is ObjC and Swift.
> >>> 
> >>> IMHO, objc++ exists because there are some interesting C++ based 
> >>> libraries (e.g. data processing, business logic, file format decoders) 
> >>> where it should be possible to integrate them into objc based GUI apps. 
> >>> So in MVC architecture, C++ would be mainly used for providing an 
> >>> existing data model.
> >> 
> >> this could be also a reason for writing such a wrapper.
> > 
> > I do not understand how it would help. If the GUI is to be written in ObjC 
> > and some C++ libs to be included, wrapping ObjC transforms the whole 
> > project into a C++ project which is not what I would like to have.
> > 
> >> why doing things in two language becomes the standard way? think of it as 
> >> you were using python and have to do GUI staff with Qt, does i have to try 
> >> py-c++ or to use a wrapper like pyqt?
> > 
> > Well, if I use ObjC and want to do some macOS or Linux or Windows GUI 
> > stuff. Then I simply use GNUstep withou any wrappers.
> > 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> GNUSTEP framework is a very easy-and-popular framework, i like it both 
> >> with developing, and in use. and I think it will make another little 
> >> advance if there was some easy/neat way to use from c++ (and many other 
> >> programming languages, like perl, and even javascript), i assume some 
> >> progress when a c++ programmer (thinks in terms of templates, 
> >> mutli-inheritance and smartpointers) has access to GNUSTEP. I know that i 
> >> didn't invent something new or make things impossible as possible. I want 
> >> to help people that like c++-syntax to consider gnustep as an option, 
> >> after all.
> > 
> > Ok!
> > 
> > Now, I could imagine something like a https://www.wxwidgets.org 
> > <https://www.wxwidgets.org/> glue so that you can compile any wxWidgets 
> > based application not only for macOS, Linux (GTK, Qt, X11 etc.) or Windows 
> > but also for GNUstep. So make GNUstep another "backend" option for 
> > wxWidgets in the list of supported platforms:
> > 
> >       https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/ <https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/>   
> > (i.e. create some wxGNUstep)
> > 
> >> 
> >>> 
> >>> I wonder what a use case of the reverse wrapping would be.
> >> 
> >> a syntax-sugar, or convince wrapper is the main goal.  maybe used as 
> >> additional gui-frontend for a c++  graphical or command line application 
> >> without too much diving into obj-c++.
> > 
> > There may be a key decision before starting a project like you are thinking 
> > of: which classes and interfaces should your wrapper provide? Something 
> > completely new (optimized for wrapping GNUstep) or a well known set of 
> > interfaces already used by many C++ projects.
> > 
> > Beware: there are already many:
> > 
> >       
> > https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/babfl5/a_pretty_big_list_of_c_gui_libraries/
> >  
> > <https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/babfl5/a_pretty_big_list_of_c_gui_libraries/>
> > 
> > So wxWidget seems to me one of the preferred choices - but I am not that 
> > active in C++ that I know what others are doing.
> > 
> > What I therefor suggest is to check if it is sufficient to make a special 
> > compiler setup to compile wxOSX/Cocoaas as C++ wrapper around GNUstep. So 
> > it may even almost exist but nobody did have the idea to make use of it. 
> > And it may be a much more manageable task than inventing a new wrapper and 
> > make people use it.
> > 
> > Now I see a nice benefit of such a project: get any source package from 
> > github (e.g. KiCAD) that uses wxWidgets, compile it with wxGNUstep and get 
> > a harmonized look and feel inside a GNUstep desktop...
> > 
> > 
> 

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