In article <bu7199$jit$1@digitaldaemon.com>, news.digitalmars.com says...
>
>
>Actually, why not get SWT from IBM and port it directly
>to D? you don't even need the dynamic libraries that IBM
>built for making it java accesible.  Has anybody thought
>of this

Yes,
There has been same discussion on the past about a D GUI.
We even had a contribution from someone that worked on
the SWT team.

> or event better worked on it?

No (That I know about),
I think D is getting stable enough to start
something more definitive.

we have now (at least) 5 started GUI:
- dig (abandoned by the creator)
- DUI
- windy (by C)
- Andy's something (by Andy)
- and another just announced today (check post...?)

I believe that we will always have
a GTK binding, being it DUI or some other one,
that means that anything done with DUI
will not be lost because, in the worst case,
it will be easely ported to any GTK binding.

Ant

htt://dui.sourceforge.net

In article <bu70il$i7n$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Ilya Minkov says...
>
>Ant wrote:
>> That is the way of the past!
>> Can we go with an OpenGL toolkit?
>> Is that even an hipoteses?
>
>I had already thought about something like that, but it is very problematic.
[...]
>I would say that GTK GUI makes quite some sense.

me too ;)

>The bad thing on it is
>that GTK is a huge monster which is not installed on Windows by default,
>and only works well on Unix systems. ;)
>But maybe DUI-compatible
>libraries could be written to work with Windows GUI directly, and
>similar for other GUIs such as MacOS-X, BeOS/Zeta, AmigaOS and QNX,
>whatever is to come next...

That would be one very big task (times each system).
I believe GTK was already seen on the Mac.

>
>-eye
>

overall that's not good news...

let me check the references you made.

Ant

Ant wrote:

>>>Any suggestions as for which GUI library is the best one?  wxWindows?
> 
> 
> Walter said:
> 
> 
>>wxWindows is certainly a contender.
> 
> 

I suggest to use the way Julian Smart went when he designed the second version of wxWindows.
wxWindows uses the native interface on every platform (Win32 Api on Windows, GTK on Linux, whatever on MacOS etc.)
You could see this library as abstraction layer beetween the system's widget and your application. This way your application runs almost as fast as a native one and it's code is platform idenpendent.

Stephan Wienczny

Ant wrote:

>>>Any suggestions as for which GUI library is the best one?  wxWindows?
>>>      
>>>
>
>Walter said:
>
>  
>
>>wxWindows is certainly a contender.
>>    
>>
>
>That is the way of the past!
>Can we go with an OpenGL toolkit?
>Is that even an hipoteses?
>
>There are a few OpenGL wizards here.
>What do you thing? Is that a good idea?
>
>there are already a couple of open GL GUI toolkits
>started. I would start from scrach but looking
>of the good toolkits available.
>
>The advantages are many and include:
>- protability! - write once compile any where
>- capabilities that current toolkits can't even dream of
>
>the disadvantage are few and include:
>- non native look :((((( unless something like java swing is used
>
>I wouldn't mind colaborating on such a thing,
>for old, retrograde toolkits I already have DUI.
>(I might even start one after... and if nobody
>takes up on the idea)
>
>Ant
>
>DUI - D graphical User Interface
>http://dui.sourceforge.net
>
>(I have my reasons not to post the links to the existing
>OpenGL toolkits that I'm not disclosing, sorry.
>It's not shameless promotion of DUI.
>They should be easy to find anyway.)
>
>
>  
>

I would like a openGL GUI, in openGL, although I don't think it should be the main one.  People would be able to really show off in D if there was one.  When I last when looking for a good openGL gui in C++/C, I couldn't find one that met my specifications and ended up designing the entire thing myself (sorry I can't release it).  It had buttons, textboxes, listboxes, menus, scrollbars, updownboxes, combo boxes and windows.  It looked good as well, and was very customisable.  I can't give any time on this at the moment but parhaps in the future I could contribute.

I think what would be better is something that allows users to switch from openGL to standard windows GUI without changing the programming used.  The openGL ones would of course have many extensions to make them cooler.  I also think that if possible the openGL GUI shouldn't nessarly be tied to any event handling system, ie the users should be able to substitute their own. That was the major reason I developed my own.

Anderson

In article <bu7a2u$13je$1@digitaldaemon.com>, J Anderson says...
>
>Ant wrote:
>
>>>>Any suggestions as for which GUI library is the best one?  wxWindows?
>>>> 
>>>>
>>
>>Walter said:
>>
>> 
>>
>>>wxWindows is certainly a contender.
>>> 
>>>
>>
>>That is the way of the past!
>>Can we go with an OpenGL toolkit?
>>Is that even an hipoteses?
>
>I would like a openGL GUI, in openGL, although I don't think it should be the main one.  People would be able to really show off in D if there was one.  When I last when looking for a good openGL gui in C++/C, I couldn't find one that met my specifications and ended up designing the entire thing myself (sorry I can't release it).  It had buttons, textboxes, listboxes, menus, scrollbars, updownboxes, combo boxes and windows.  It looked good as well, and was very customisable.  I can't give any time on this at the moment but parhaps in the future I could contribute.
>
>I think what would be better is something that allows users to switch from openGL to standard windows GUI without changing the programming used.  The openGL ones would of course have many extensions to make them cooler.  I also think that if possible the openGL GUI shouldn't nessarly be tied to any event handling system, ie the users should be able to substitute their own. That was the major reason I developed my own.
>
>Anderson
>

So, it is possible!
And you say it's a one man job?!

You only enumerate the good things. What are the draw backs? (I was already ready to give up on the idea...)

It's a good idea, what proves that is that there are several tries at it, maybe the available hardware and libs aren't yet up to the quality of the idea. I don't know.

Anybody else has a OpenGL toolkit on the drawer? :)

Ant

> So, it is possible!
> And you say it's a one man job?!
>
> 
>

Actually I worked on a team, but did all the GUI myself, among other things, in rushed 4 weeks (the guy who was supposed to do it left the group).  It was part of a games engine, but the GUI was pretty generic (although it was tide into the game engine).  Basicly everything was derived from a button (ie everything has mouse up/down events ect...). There were 4 basic classes of which you could build basicly anything menu, scrollbar, button and textbox.



The tab list along the button is a menu. The images in the background are actually a menu as well, with the free floating option on. Everything animates when you move the mouse over.

Of course my GUI didn't support some of the most import things such as file-dialogs.

> You only enumerate the good things. What are the draw backs? (I was already ready to give up on the idea...)
>
> 
>
Humm.
 * I imagine the windows gui libraries have been really put through
   their paces and do just about everything.
 * You can only run it on machines with some sort of 3d acceleration.
 * When the OS vendor (ie MS) add some new feature to their controls,
   all the programs get it.
 * (This is a big one) Slow to load up -> particularly if you use
   lots of pictures.  You would need a heavy focus on pre-fetching in
   a separate thread.
 * No dialog/arc builder (I suppose you could make one).
 * Feels kinda separate from the OS (ie like java swing does).
 * Not to many to copy from (this is a plus for D also).

But.

 * I found the special effects and stuff you can do with it are quite
   amazing. For example, instead of using pictures, I used
   animations. That meant that every part of the GUI could animate,
   which is great for skinning.
 * Everything is skinable.
 * Make the controls more functional then their windows counterparts.
   ie if you don't like it you can override it and re-program how it
   works using openGL, which is far more flexible then using windows
   graphics routines.
 * IMHO can look great.

> It's a good idea, what proves that is that there are several tries at it, maybe the available hardware and libs aren't yet up to the quality of the idea. I don't know.
>
> 
>
I think if you have a reasonably machine it's up to scratch, but you'll be waiting for ever if you expect everyone to have n up-to-scratch machine.  GUI doesn't require as much CPU as 3d games do, but it does eat up allot of resources if you use big textures.  I guess it would be used 90% of the time in games and 3d applications. But hay the game industry is one of the biggest industry players and that's where most of the showing off is done.  A word process done like the above would be so cool.

But if your looking for a GUI that everyone will use, then your probably barking up the wrong tree.

-Anderson

J Anderson wrote:

>   A word processer done like the above would be so cool.
>
Or leds, that would be even cooler.

On Fri, 16 Jan 2004 10:14:39 +0800, J Anderson wrote:

> 
> 
> But if your looking for a GUI that everyone will use, then your probably barking up the wrong tree.

If you're not alone you are not leading the way... :}

Thanks!
I'm trying to install one more "formal" OpenGL GUItoolkit
to see how it feels.

Ant

First time I hear about but I think it will be wonderful...
I think we (you) should keep a similar window class architecture (as most
gui's). I know nothing on OpenGL except that's a renderer....



In article <bu6jhe$2s6g$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Ant says...
>
>>> Any suggestions as for which GUI library is the best one?  wxWindows?
>
>Walter said:
>
>>wxWindows is certainly a contender.
>
>That is the way of the past!
>Can we go with an OpenGL toolkit?
>Is that even an hipoteses?
>
>There are a few OpenGL wizards here.
>What do you thing? Is that a good idea?
>
>there are already a couple of open GL GUI toolkits
>started. I would start from scrach but looking
>of the good toolkits available.
>
>The advantages are many and include:
>- protability! - write once compile any where
>- capabilities that current toolkits can't even dream of
>
>the disadvantage are few and include:
>- non native look :((((( unless something like java swing is used
>
>I wouldn't mind colaborating on such a thing,
>for old, retrograde toolkits I already have DUI.
>(I might even start one after... and if nobody
>takes up on the idea)
>
>Ant
>
>DUI - D graphical User Interface
>http://dui.sourceforge.net
>
>(I have my reasons not to post the links to the existing
>OpenGL toolkits that I'm not disclosing, sorry.
>It's not shameless promotion of DUI.
>They should be easy to find anyway.)
>
>

>
>I suggest to use the way Julian Smart went when he designed the second
>version of wxWindows.
>wxWindows uses the native interface on every platform (Win32 Api on
>Windows, GTK on Linux, whatever on MacOS etc.)
>You could see this library as abstraction layer beetween the system's
>widget and your application. This way your application runs almost as
>fast as a native one and it's code is platform idenpendent.

This is also the idea behind SWT which probably could be ported to D. Eclipse and SWT is supported by large companies (which can a good or bad thing). But Borland is hopping on the wxWindows bandwagon for C++.

Is anyone working on a Java to D translator? Of course D is missing most of the libraries that Java has builtin.