Hello,

How about improving DWT as part of Google Summer of Code?
I thing a stable GUI library is very important for D.

What do you think?

> I thing a stable GUI library is very important for D.

+1 to that. But I think using using SWT as inspiration for a GUI library may not be the best possible choice. I would like to see an API which uses D well. Small things like using properties instead of getters and setters come to the mind first. I haven't looked at the DWT source code but I suspect it may suffer from some of the same short comings as SWT.

I have been looking for a good cross platform GUI library but the choices available so far (Qt, wxWidgets, GTK+) all come from the C++ world (where garbage collection is almost absent) thus entangling memory management issues with the GUI API and its architecture in general.

I would love to hear some recommendations on terse and powerful GUI libraries even if they are not cross platform. I'd seriously consider contributing to such a project.

On Saturday, 3 March 2012 at 19:54:56 UTC, Mr. Anonymous wrote:
> Hello,
>
> How about improving DWT as part of Google Summer of Code?
> I thing a stable GUI library is very important for D.
>
> What do you think?

On 2012-03-03 20:54, Mr. Anonymous wrote:
> Hello,
>
> How about improving DWT as part of Google Summer of Code?
> I thing a stable GUI library is very important for D.
>
> What do you think?

I think it's a great idea.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Sunday, 4 March 2012 at 16:31:35 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2012-03-03 20:54, Mr. Anonymous wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> How about improving DWT as part of Google Summer of Code?
>> I thing a stable GUI library is very important for D.
>>
>> What do you think?
>
> I think it's a great idea.

For beginning, you might want to add it here:
http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?GSOC_2012_Ideas

On 2012-03-04 21:46, Mr. Anonymous wrote:
> On Sunday, 4 March 2012 at 16:31:35 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> On 2012-03-03 20:54, Mr. Anonymous wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> How about improving DWT as part of Google Summer of Code?
>>> I thing a stable GUI library is very important for D.
>>>
>>> What do you think?
>>
>> I think it's a great idea.
>
> For beginning, you might want to add it here:
> http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?GSOC_2012_Ideas

Do you think we should add an entry specific for DWT or an entry for a GUI-library in general?

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Monday, 5 March 2012 at 09:33:53 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2012-03-04 21:46, Mr. Anonymous wrote:
>> On Sunday, 4 March 2012 at 16:31:35 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>> On 2012-03-03 20:54, Mr. Anonymous wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> How about improving DWT as part of Google Summer of Code?
>>>> I thing a stable GUI library is very important for D.
>>>>
>>>> What do you think?
>>>
>>> I think it's a great idea.
>>
>> For beginning, you might want to add it here:
>> http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?GSOC_2012_Ideas
>
> Do you think we should add an entry specific for DWT or an entry for a GUI-library in general?

In my opinion, an entry for a GUI-library in general, while mentioning DWT as the number one option in the comments.

On Saturday, 3 March 2012 at 21:12:19 UTC, Sandeep Datta wrote:
>> I thing a stable GUI library is very important for D.
>
> +1 to that. But I think using using SWT as inspiration for a GUI library may not be the best possible choice. I would like to see an API which uses D well. Small things like using properties instead of getters and setters come to the mind first. I haven't looked at the DWT source code but I suspect it may suffer from some of the same short comings as SWT.

At this time we shouldn't be creating a GUI from the ground up,
they do exist (DFL, DUI?). It is however beneficial to have
access to a GUI API available in other languages, SWT, GTK, Qt,
WX.

Now many of these are reaching a state I suppose is considered
complete (with exception to be not supporting the latest).
Possibly selecting one to build a nice D API on top of would be
reasonable.

As for SWT, I don't know what you mean by short comings. All GUI
toolkits have them, but maybe you mean the API is not D like.
Personally the experience I have had with SWT (older DWT) has
impressed me. I really enjoyed the design behind it, my favorite
so for for toolkits I've used. And it seems JFace is the higher
level API, which is great, but I kind of feel that would be a
great place to build a D like API over DWT (but having the same
JFace API is good for current SWT users).

D needs a GUI that is pretty easy to use and really easy to set
up. Then we can move to a nice D layer, then once D has gotten a
true market it will get native implementations and APIs. And also
getting a more complete Entice Designer will also be needed to
really hit that larger market.

On Wednesday, 7 March 2012 at 17:13:02 UTC, Jesse Phillips wrote:
> As for SWT, I don't know what you mean by short comings. All GUI
> toolkits have them, but maybe you mean the API is not D like.

At a cursory glance? The fact that there are numerous library classes for interfacing with files, etc. (in base) that duplicate functionality that is in both Phobos & Tango, instead of modifying the libraries to rely on Phobos or Tango.

The fact that the packages under base have "java" as their TLD.

The fact that the packages for the main widget library seem hopelessly intertwingled with Eclipse.

The fact that the library has duplicate code in separate packages per platform, rather than using a canonical D pattern for supporting this, such as "version."

These are a few things that jumped out at me in five minutes of browsing the git repo.

TK

On 2012-03-16 21:24, Tim Keating wrote:
> At a cursory glance? The fact that there are numerous library classes
> for interfacing with files, etc. (in base) that duplicate functionality
> that is in both Phobos & Tango, instead of modifying the libraries to
> rely on Phobos or Tango.
>
> The fact that the packages under base have "java" as their TLD.
>
> The fact that the packages for the main widget library seem hopelessly
> intertwingled with Eclipse.
>
> The fact that the library has duplicate code in separate packages per
> platform, rather than using a canonical D pattern for supporting this,
> such as "version."
>
> These are a few things that jumped out at me in five minutes of browsing
> the git repo.
>
> TK

We're trying to keep to code as close to the original Java code as possible. This is all due to making it easier to port future versions of SWT.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Friday, 16 March 2012 at 20:24:52 UTC, Tim Keating wrote:
> On Wednesday, 7 March 2012 at 17:13:02 UTC, Jesse Phillips wrote:
>> As for SWT, I don't know what you mean by short comings. All GUI
>> toolkits have them, but maybe you mean the API is not D like.
>
> At a cursory glance? The fact that there are numerous library classes for interfacing with files, etc. (in base) that duplicate functionality that is in both Phobos & Tango, instead of modifying the libraries to rely on Phobos or Tango.
>
> The fact that the packages under base have "java" as their TLD.
>
> The fact that the packages for the main widget library seem hopelessly intertwingled with Eclipse.
>
> The fact that the library has duplicate code in separate packages per platform, rather than using a canonical D pattern for supporting this, such as "version."
>
> These are a few things that jumped out at me in five minutes of browsing the git repo.
>
> TK


The examples also all use the horrible anonymous class thing. A GUI library really should use delegates for callbacks.