Shawn has not responded to inquiries on dsource for quite a while. He is the sole developer for the "official" GUI toolkit for our beloved :D.

This cannot continue. All I ask is that the official toolkit be in active development, which leaves four options:

1. Renew Shawn's interest in DWT
2. Install a new lead for DWT or a branch of DWT
3. Choose another official toolkit
4. Develop a new official toolkit

Kyle Furlong wrote:
> Shawn has not responded to inquiries on dsource for quite a while. He is the sole developer for the "official" GUI toolkit for our beloved :D.
> 
> This cannot continue. All I ask is that the official toolkit be in active development, which leaves four options:
> 
> 1. Renew Shawn's interest in DWT
> 2. Install a new lead for DWT or a branch of DWT
> 3. Choose another official toolkit
> 4. Develop a new official toolkit

If Shawn doesn't come back in a couple of months, I'd suggest option 3, namely, DUI http://www.dsource.org/projects/dui . My reasoning...

#1) Ant seems to stick around and is doing a superb job with it.

#2) DWT is Windows only and to make DWT cross platform means to essentially rewrite DWT for each platform you target, this is a development and maintenance nightmare. Meanwhile, DUI being based upon GTK means it either already works or is an easy port to all platforms GTK targets.

#3) Is there anyone else around here with enough experience to write DWT ports? How familiar are people with SWT in the first place? Correct me if wrong, but I get the feeling people are more familiar with GTK.

DWT _may_ be a better product, but DUI is more practical.

I second that.
For me, DWT without Linux support is useless.

In article <e1oevk$2kr7$2@digitaldaemon.com>, Frank Benoit says...
>
>I second that.
>For me, DWT without Linux support is useless.

What about wxD?  That seems promising as the underlying framework is supported across multiple platforms.

-Kramer

clayasaurus wrote:
> Kyle Furlong wrote:
>> Shawn has not responded to inquiries on dsource for quite a while. He is the sole developer for the "official" GUI toolkit for our beloved :D.
>>
>> This cannot continue. All I ask is that the official toolkit be in active development, which leaves four options:
>>
>> 1. Renew Shawn's interest in DWT
>> 2. Install a new lead for DWT or a branch of DWT
>> 3. Choose another official toolkit
>> 4. Develop a new official toolkit
> 
> If Shawn doesn't come back in a couple of months, I'd suggest option 3, namely, DUI http://www.dsource.org/projects/dui . My reasoning...
> 
> #1) Ant seems to stick around and is doing a superb job with it.
> 
> #2) DWT is Windows only and to make DWT cross platform means to essentially rewrite DWT for each platform you target, this is a development and maintenance nightmare. Meanwhile, DUI being based upon GTK means it either already works or is an easy port to all platforms GTK targets.
> 
> #3) Is there anyone else around here with enough experience to write DWT ports? How familiar are people with SWT in the first place? Correct me if wrong, but I get the feeling people are more familiar with GTK.
> 
> DWT _may_ be a better product, but DUI is more practical.

Good points.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't there a number of (large) dependencies you have to pre-install to use DUI on Windows. Like GTK + MinGW or CYGWIN and such?

To me, unless that is handled very nicely by an installer (which is also easy to duplicate for end-user installation routines), that would be a major strike against it being more practical.

IMHO, the choice needs to be 'seamless' on Windows because that will be the major platform for D in the foreseeable future.

Thanks,

- Dave

Dave wrote:
> clayasaurus wrote:
>> Kyle Furlong wrote:
>>> Shawn has not responded to inquiries on dsource for quite a while. He is the sole developer for the "official" GUI toolkit for our beloved :D.
>>>
>>> This cannot continue. All I ask is that the official toolkit be in active development, which leaves four options:
>>>
>>> 1. Renew Shawn's interest in DWT
>>> 2. Install a new lead for DWT or a branch of DWT
>>> 3. Choose another official toolkit
>>> 4. Develop a new official toolkit
>>
>> If Shawn doesn't come back in a couple of months, I'd suggest option 3, namely, DUI http://www.dsource.org/projects/dui . My reasoning...
>>
>> #1) Ant seems to stick around and is doing a superb job with it.
>>
>> #2) DWT is Windows only and to make DWT cross platform means to essentially rewrite DWT for each platform you target, this is a development and maintenance nightmare. Meanwhile, DUI being based upon GTK means it either already works or is an easy port to all platforms GTK targets.
>>
>> #3) Is there anyone else around here with enough experience to write DWT ports? How familiar are people with SWT in the first place? Correct me if wrong, but I get the feeling people are more familiar with GTK.
>>
>> DWT _may_ be a better product, but DUI is more practical.
> 
> Good points.
> 
> Maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't there a number of (large) dependencies you have to pre-install to use DUI on Windows. Like GTK + MinGW or CYGWIN and such?
> 
> To me, unless that is handled very nicely by an installer (which is also easy to duplicate for end-user installation routines), that would be a major strike against it being more practical.
> 
> IMHO, the choice needs to be 'seamless' on Windows because that will be the major platform for D in the foreseeable future.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> - Dave

no just install Gtk+ from http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
depending on your compilation procedures you don't even need a DUI lib, just the sources.

Ant

Kramer wrote:
> In article <e1oevk$2kr7$2@digitaldaemon.com>, Frank Benoit says...
>> I second that.
>> For me, DWT without Linux support is useless.
> 
> What about wxD?  That seems promising as the underlying framework is supported
> across multiple platforms.

It is? I just looked at its website and it says it has ports for Windows, GTK, and Mac, which makes me think that they write a new backend for each platform they support. From what I can tell, wxd is farther along than DWT, but the site says that wxd is still an early alpha.

> 
> -Kramer
> 
> 

In article <e1p7tn$an8$1@digitaldaemon.com>, clayasaurus says...
>
>Kramer wrote:
>> In article <e1oevk$2kr7$2@digitaldaemon.com>, Frank Benoit says...
>>> I second that.
>>> For me, DWT without Linux support is useless.
>> 
>> What about wxD?  That seems promising as the underlying framework is supported across multiple platforms.
>
>It is? I just looked at its website and it says it has ports for Windows, GTK, and Mac, which makes me think that they write a new backend for each platform they support. From what I can tell, wxd is farther along than DWT, but the site says that wxd is still an early alpha.
>
>> 
>> -Kramer
>> 
>> 


Well, I might have spoke hastily.  I just meant that wxWidgets is available on multiple platforms and I think D code is fairly portable, so I guess I extrapolated a bit.  I just get excited thinking about a stable D gui platform. I'll cease here though before I spout more gibberish.

-Kramer

clayasaurus wrote:

>> What about wxD?  That seems promising as the underlying framework is supported across multiple platforms.
> 
> It is? I just looked at its website and it says it has ports for Windows, GTK, and Mac, which makes me think that they write a new backend for each platform they support. From what I can tell, wxd is farther along than DWT, but the site says that wxd is still an early alpha.

Half right, *wxWidgets* has a new port of each platform that it supports. (but it is written in C++, this cross-platform library)

Here is their list of the currently supported wxWidgets platforms:
    * wxMSW: Win32/Win64/WinCE.
    * wxGTK: GTK+ 1 or 2 on Unix.
    * wxX11: Xlib on Unix.
    * wxMac: Mac OS X/Carbon, Mac OS Classic.
    * wxMGL: MGL on DOS, Linux and other platforms supported by MGL.
    * wxBase: non-GUI builds of the library.
    * wxCocoa: Mac OS X/Cocoa (beta).
    * wxOS2: a Presentation Manager port (beta).
    * wxPalmOS: a Palm OS port (alpha).

wxD is "just" a D wrapping layer for wxWidgets, inspired by / based on wx.NET - but written in C++ for the wrappers and in D for the classes.

The wxD code should be portable to everything with wxWidgets and D,
but is being developed and actively tested on three major platforms:

    * Windows XP (wxMSW)
    * Linux/GTK (wxGTK)
    * Mac OS X (wxMac)

It's not being tested on any of Windows 95, GTK 1.x, X11 or Mac OS 9.
But it "could" still be made to work there, if anyone wanted to...(?)

The alpha status (same as D!) comes mostly from the facts that the
memory handling isn't exactly perfect, and that some wxD demos crash.

wxWidgets itself (C++) is stable, at least on these three platforms.
wx.NET, on which wxD is based, is also a bit more stable and tested.


Not being written all in D (but half in C++ and half in C# -> D),
means that it is both smaller and bigger than the other projects...
Smaller: less code is needed on the D side of the equation. (wxD)
Bigger: more code is needed on the C++ side (being done elsewhere)

But there should be *no* OS-specific code in wxD, outside of API
differences (versioned) or the differences in the Makefiles etc.
I will make the home page spell this out clearer, with wxD 0.05.
(since apparently you got the wrong impression, from wxD 0.04...)

--anders


PS.
You can also check out some of the other language wrappers for wx:

* C++     http://www.wxwidgets.org/
* C#      http://wxnet.sourceforge.net/
* Python  http://www.wxpython.org/
* Lua     http://wxlua.sourceforge.net/

These all share the same underlying interface implementation. (wx)

Have you ever thought about putting your project on dsource? I have a feeling it would get a lot more exposure to D programmers that way :) I know I myself like to keep tabs on most of the projects on dsource, and the reason I didn't mention wxd was because I'm mostly clueless about it.
~ Clay

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> clayasaurus wrote:
> 
>>> What about wxD?  That seems promising as the underlying framework is supported across multiple platforms.
>>
>> It is? I just looked at its website and it says it has ports for Windows, GTK, and Mac, which makes me think that they write a new backend for each platform they support. From what I can tell, wxd is farther along than DWT, but the site says that wxd is still an early alpha.
> 
> Half right, *wxWidgets* has a new port of each platform that it supports. (but it is written in C++, this cross-platform library)
> 
> Here is their list of the currently supported wxWidgets platforms:
>     * wxMSW: Win32/Win64/WinCE.
>     * wxGTK: GTK+ 1 or 2 on Unix.
>     * wxX11: Xlib on Unix.
>     * wxMac: Mac OS X/Carbon, Mac OS Classic.
>     * wxMGL: MGL on DOS, Linux and other platforms supported by MGL.
>     * wxBase: non-GUI builds of the library.
>     * wxCocoa: Mac OS X/Cocoa (beta).
>     * wxOS2: a Presentation Manager port (beta).
>     * wxPalmOS: a Palm OS port (alpha).
> 
> wxD is "just" a D wrapping layer for wxWidgets, inspired by / based on wx.NET - but written in C++ for the wrappers and in D for the classes.
> 
> The wxD code should be portable to everything with wxWidgets and D,
> but is being developed and actively tested on three major platforms:
> 
>     * Windows XP (wxMSW)
>     * Linux/GTK (wxGTK)
>     * Mac OS X (wxMac)
> 
> It's not being tested on any of Windows 95, GTK 1.x, X11 or Mac OS 9.
> But it "could" still be made to work there, if anyone wanted to...(?)
> 
> The alpha status (same as D!) comes mostly from the facts that the
> memory handling isn't exactly perfect, and that some wxD demos crash.
> 
> wxWidgets itself (C++) is stable, at least on these three platforms.
> wx.NET, on which wxD is based, is also a bit more stable and tested.
> 
> 
> Not being written all in D (but half in C++ and half in C# -> D),
> means that it is both smaller and bigger than the other projects...
> Smaller: less code is needed on the D side of the equation. (wxD)
> Bigger: more code is needed on the C++ side (being done elsewhere)
> 
> But there should be *no* OS-specific code in wxD, outside of API
> differences (versioned) or the differences in the Makefiles etc.
> I will make the home page spell this out clearer, with wxD 0.05.
> (since apparently you got the wrong impression, from wxD 0.04...)
> 
> --anders
> 
> 
> PS.
> You can also check out some of the other language wrappers for wx:
> 
> * C++     http://www.wxwidgets.org/
> * C#      http://wxnet.sourceforge.net/
> * Python  http://www.wxpython.org/
> * Lua     http://wxlua.sourceforge.net/
> 
> These all share the same underlying interface implementation. (wx)