> In the tradition of people suggesting what they find best, and despite > you asking for a C++ library, I'm going to be awkward and recommend > Java. Go on, give it a try - it won't kill you. The app can be made to > look native on any platform using the Look & Feel methods (LAF). > Instead of fighting to try and find a portable library that sticks to > what you know, branch out to a library that is DESIGNED to work on > multiple platforms! Of course, if you need to communicate with > external hardware then Java probably isn't up to snuff yet... > but for UI stuff, it is just fine.
Well, let me speak history. A long time ago, I decided to learn and use Java. First, I started to use it for webpage applets, but I also looked in writing normal apps with it. Those days I used first Java, and then Java2 with Swing and stuff that came with it. The reasons why I put it aside were: 1. It was *slow*. It was so slow to even start the app that made it irritating even for usual testing, let alone for using it for real jobs. It could've been me doing something silly, but I don't think so, since it took about at least 5 seconds to start a hello world app (I'm not exaggerating. Five real seconds for starting a hello world app!) And if I tried a GUI app with all the bells and whistles, a startup delay of between 10 and 20 seconds was quite expected. 2. The apps looked so dumb. OK, I don't want to talk about its purple and gray color theme, but at least its layout design which did not give the pixel level control I enjoyed in other languages I used back then (VB) made me crazy. Things have changed since then, probably. For example, it's the first time I head about LAF. But I still have a very bad history of Java in mind, and yet, on the rare occasions that I see a web page with a Java applet in it, and I have a JVM installed, I see that at least the sluggish speed has been happily inherited with the new versions. Also, for my current app, the fact that a huge runtime must be downloaded and installed before the app is a bad point, since today, Windows XP and Linux neither come with a JVM installed, the former to smash out Sun, and the latter because Sun's JVM is not free. Some distro's ship other free JVM's, and some even ship Sun's on the CDs, but yet it's not something we can count on. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Especially, if you have a Java app which uses LAF to get a native look and feel, and is not so slow (and is small enough), I'd be happy if you could mail it to me off-list, so that I can have a look. Thanks! ------------- Ehsan Akhgari Farda Technology (http://www.farda-tech.com/) List Owner: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] [ WWW: http://www.beginthread.com/Ehsan ] Physician, heal thyself: then you will also heal your patient. Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes the man who heals himself. -Thus Spoke Zarathustra, F. W. Nietzsche _______________________________________________ msvc mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] See http://beginthread.com/mailman/listinfo/msvc_beginthread.com for subscription changes, and list archive.
