"nick" <nick.atamas@gmail.com> says:ds7un0$6va$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Oh, and: http://www.hacknot.info/hacknot/action/showEntry?eid=74
>
> those issues too.


Since Swing is older than SWT, it is stable and less bug than SWT. For such
a big and rapidly progressing project, Eclipse/SWT can not avoid bugs. But
nowadays SWT seems stable and feature rich than ever, because the support of
many heavyweight companies in the industry. The excellent architecture of
Eclipse/
SWT/RCP/GEF has attractted more and more programmers to pursue. With the
fast spread of Eclipse, the documents and third part Widgets will become
more available.

The author said that "just because SWT is the technically inferior solution doesn't mean that it will go away. Hype, marketing, vendor over-enthusiasm and managerial stupidity can propel a second-rate solution to prominence. "

But let's see the success of Eclipse/SWT:
http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2005/eclipse_flashplatform.html
http://press.nokia.com/PR/200406/950657_5.html
http://www.symbian.com/news/pr/2005/pr20053158.html
http://www.borland.com/us/company/news/press_releases/2005/02_28_05_borland_amplifies_eclipse_support.html
http://www.bea.com/framework.jsp?CNT=pr01421.htm&FP=/content/news_events/press_releases/2005
http://www.sybase.com/detail?id=1034627
http://www3.ca.com/Press/PressRelease.aspx?CID=65460

and more ...
http://www.eclipse.org/membership/

It seem that this will never happen to NetBeans nor SWING.

Why all those companies support that technically inferior solution?

"Shawn Liu" <shawn666.liu@gmail.com> says:dsa3hu$207a$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>
> "nick" <nick.atamas@gmail.com> says:ds7un0$6va$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>> Oh, and: http://www.hacknot.info/hacknot/action/showEntry?eid=74
>>
>> those issues too.

Some story about SWING and SWT http://www.mail-archive.com/jug-discussion@tucson-jug.org/msg00355.html

In article <dsa46m$20mk$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Shawn Liu says...
>
>
>"Shawn Liu" <shawn666.liu@gmail.com> says:dsa3hu$207a$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>
>Some story about SWING and SWT http://www.mail-archive.com/jug-discussion@tucson-jug.org/msg00355.html
>
>
Ye, but look when this story was written! in 2002!
Swing has dramatically changed in these 4 years.
And it is used much more widely than SWT.
It would be realy nice to have Swing like GUI lib in D! :)
(I am java developer, using Swing extensivelly)

--
ub

>> O N E - Choosing the right toolkit
>> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>> If users can choose, then the toolkit you select for D as the default is
>> going to send a message more than anything else.
>> 
>> I should caution you against DWT/SWT. In addition to reasons outlined by Roberto Mariottini SWT will be viewed by many people as a "bad move for D", because SWT is a large toolkit that has severe issues. This will create a negative image of stagnation and other negative characteristics associated with SWT. JFace is even more problematic.
>> 
>> However, if you choose a small, clean toolkit that is rock solid and REALLY easy to grasp (the TinyXML of GUI toolkits) you will create a positive image: "we have solid code and the future is looking bright". There are enthusiasts and open source audience to attract. This GUI toolkit may later grow or be replaced (change is inevitable). The key is to let people pick up the GUI and run with it (maybe not very far, but right away).

Some thoughts on cross platform gui toolkits.

QT
To create an gui on QT which you have to do an C wrapper around C++ code
is to much. And QT is huge, both in source and binary size.

SWT
Different backends for it as I understand it.
Mucho problemas to keep that in sync and time consuming.
And it's huge, at least for linux, if it is using gtk.

GTK
It's written in c, easy to use.
There should be a OSX version out there somewhere.
I have written a thin oo layer on top of it in a short time while learning
D. So some dedicated people short do that in no time and if it's working
on one platform it should work on the other platforms as well.
But it is huge and it's not one of the fastest gui library.

All these above are huge, you must ship tons of dll's instead of one small exe for your new great D program.

FLTK
fltk is very small library in C++, but not the best looking toolkit and
it lacks some features a powerful toolkit should have. But its great for
static linking, even ns linux.
One idea might be to do a one time fork of the source. Convert all the
backend source from C++ to D, which should be "easy" as they use only C
calls for interacting with win32/xwindows/osx. Then convert all the
widgets from C++ to D while fixing the shortcomings of fltk. Like layout
management and callback/events stuff and use a better D like syntax.


/Micke

Micke wrote:
> GTK
> It's written in c, easy to use.
> There should be a OSX version out there somewhere.
> I have written a thin oo layer on top of it in a short time while learning
> D. So some dedicated people short do that in no time and if it's working
> on one platform it should work on the other platforms as well.
> But it is huge and it's not one of the fastest gui library.

This link might interest you: http://dui.sourceforge.net/


-- 
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
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------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Tomasz Stachowiak  /+ a.k.a. h3r3tic +/

Micke wrote:

> Some thoughts on cross platform gui toolkits.
[...]
> GTK
> It's written in c, easy to use.
> There should be a OSX version out there somewhere.

GTK+ is great, but the Mac OS X support is "behind"...
(the Windows support for it is much more up-to-date)

http://gtk-osx.sourceforge.net/ is still at GTK 1.x,
and I'm not sure how the new GTK 2.x is coming along ?

See http://developer.imendio.com/wiki/Gtk_Mac_OS_X
(works with X11 too, but that doesn't really count)

And it looks pretty alien, even when it does work...
(i.e. both theme and file dialogs are "different")


> I have written a thin oo layer on top of it in a short time while learning
> D. So some dedicated people short do that in no time and if it's working
> on one platform it should work on the other platforms as well.

There is the "difference between theory and practice" aspect.

> But it is huge and it's not one of the fastest gui library.

It's good for Linux. Just not "optimal" for Windows/Mac OS X.

--anders

PS. wxD uses wxGTK on Linux...

Roberto Mariottini wrote:
> In article <ds9kot$1j45$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...
> 
>>
> [...]
> 
>>Keep in mind, though, that AWT despite its flaws is what got Java off the ground and kept it going for the initial few years.
> 
> 
> I completely disagree. I used Java from the beginning, and I can remember for
> sure that Java was nearly dead because of AWT. I remember the "Corel Office for
> Java" thing very well. Swing was the right choice, making Java exit the niche of
> server-side applications.
> 
> 
>>(I don't think AWT or Swing are contenders for D because of Sun licensing issues.)
> 
> 
> I hate to repeat myself, but there is a free Swing available at
> www.classpath.org.
> 
> Ciao
> 
> ---
> http://www.mariottini.net/roberto/

Isn't that GPL?
I vote lets not force any D developers into (L)GPL type licensing issues.  That type of 'freedom' discourages commercial use (despite what the pundits say).

-DavidM

In article <dsacvp$28v0$1@digitaldaemon.com>, David Medlock says...
>
>Roberto Mariottini wrote:
>> In article <ds9kot$1j45$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...
>> 
>>>
>> [...]
>> 
>>>Keep in mind, though, that AWT despite its flaws is what got Java off the ground and kept it going for the initial few years.
>> 
>> 
>> I completely disagree. I used Java from the beginning, and I can remember for sure that Java was nearly dead because of AWT. I remember the "Corel Office for Java" thing very well. Swing was the right choice, making Java exit the niche of server-side applications.
>> 
>> 
>>>(I don't think AWT or Swing are contenders for D because of Sun licensing issues.)
>> 
>> 
>> I hate to repeat myself, but there is a free Swing available at www.classpath.org.
>> 
>> Ciao
>> 
>> ---
>> http://www.mariottini.net/roberto/
>
>Isn't that GPL?
>I vote lets not force any D developers into (L)GPL type licensing
>issues.  That type of 'freedom' discourages commercial use (despite what
>the pundits say).

Seconded.

- Eric Anderton at yahoo

David Medlock wrote:

> Isn't that GPL?
> I vote lets not force any D developers into (L)GPL type licensing issues.  That type of 'freedom' discourages commercial use (despite what the pundits say).

It's not really fair to bundle GPL and LGPL like that I think...
The *LGPL* will only affect the library development, not the use.

The only "downside" to the LGPL is the dynamic link requirement ?
(It's possible to explicitly allow static linking as an exception)

Just my 2c,
--anders

Anders F Björklund wrote:

> nick wrote:
> 
>>>QT cannot be used because it's a proprietary, non-free product.
>> 
>> QT is an open source product. It is only proprietary if you plan to use it for proprietary means. KDE is based on QT from ground up.
> 
> Seems that the "open source" and "proprietary, non-free" terms are a bit broad and undefined here. There's more to OS than GPL ?
> 
> As I understand it, Qt offers two totally separate products... Similar to what MySQL offers for embedded databases, it seems.
> 
> 
> Either you pay for the full commercial per-developer license, or you make your program Free Software under the GPL license.
> 
> If you want to use another Open Source license (say a BSDish),
> or want to make freeware (without code), it seems you're SOL ?
> 
> 
> At least that's how I understood it... http://www.trolltech.com/products/licensing.html http://www.trolltech.com/company/model.html
> 
> Looks like just the first year would run me €3380 ? (developing a desktop application for three platforms) http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/pricing.html?cid=18
> 
> --anders
> 
> PS.
> And there still needs to be Qt C++ -> D wrappers written,
> which could prove to be a lot of work to accomplish too ?
> 
> But I won't stop anyone else from doing it, of course. :-) Just that Qt isn't my own personal favorite lib either.

You are quite right. It's a fair and square businessmodel, even Walter does it with DMDScript, and several other companies I know. The clue that makes this possible for them is that they own the code, and don't accept patches/contributions that will change this.

And I find it obvious that Trolltech wouldn't let a non-GPL port slip by without repercussions.

Lars Ivar Igesund