Hi,
I have uploaded xwt to
http://demmer.kilu.de/Software/xwt_20090305.zip

This is an extensible library that parses the XML description
of a GUI. It is based on DWT, the SWT port to D, and Tango. In theory,
it should run unaltered on Win32 and Linux, and one day also on OSX.

The basic idea is to wrap all widgets into a class that implements a configure method for each widget. During load of the XML tree, the widget tree is built in parallel.

I have included a couple of examples, so you get the idea.

Feedback&bug reports welcome.

Ciao
TomD

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 5:47 AM, TomD <t_demmer@nospam.web.de> wrote:
> Hi,
> I have uploaded xwt to
> http://demmer.kilu.de/Software/xwt_20090305.zip
>
> This is an extensible library that parses the XML description
> of a GUI. It is based on DWT, the SWT port to D, and Tango. In theory,
> it should run unaltered on Win32 and Linux, and one day also on OSX.
>
> The basic idea is to wrap all widgets into a class that implements a configure method for each widget. During load of the XML tree, the widget tree is built in parallel.
>
> I have included a couple of examples, so you get the idea.
>
> Feedback&bug reports welcome.

I was hoping you might get some comments on this.
It seems to me a lot of people like the idea of XML files to configure
a gui.  I'm not a big fan of XML, so hard for me to get excited on
that score.  Also if I'm going to use a text-file gui description
thing, I'm probably only going to use it because some GUI tool was
able to spit it out for me automatically.  If I have to write the text
file, I don't see how it's all that much of an improvement over just
writing the GUI code to begin with.  Of course once you have the
load/save of GUI layouts worked out, it's just a "simple" matter of
making a GUI to create the layouts after that.

Other question I have is -- doesn't SWT already have something for creating GUI layouts?

--bb

Bill Baxter Wrote:
[...]
> I was hoping you might get some comments on this.

Bad timing, together with Walter adding the backend sources :-)

> It seems to me a lot of people like the idea of XML files to configure a gui.  I'm not a big fan of XML, so hard for me to get excited on that score.  Also if I'm going to use a text-file gui description thing, I'm probably only going to use it because some GUI tool was able to spit it out for me automatically.  If I have to write the text file, I don't see how it's all that much of an improvement over just writing the GUI code to begin with.  Of course once you have the load/save of GUI layouts worked out, it's just a "simple" matter of making a GUI to create the layouts after that.

You are perfectly right here. The whole concept was done with
"glade" in mind. I like the idea of separating form and function.
For me personally, using xemacs in XML mode is already
"GUI enough"

> 
> Other question I have is -- doesn't SWT already have something for creating GUI layouts?
> 
Hmm, nothing that Frank so far commented about.

Ciao
TomD

TomD schrieb:
> Bill Baxter Wrote:
> [...]
>> I was hoping you might get some comments on this.
> 
> Bad timing, together with Walter adding the backend sources :-)
> 
>> It seems to me a lot of people like the idea of XML files to configure a gui.  I'm not a big fan of XML, so hard for me to get excited on that score.  Also if I'm going to use a text-file gui description thing, I'm probably only going to use it because some GUI tool was able to spit it out for me automatically.  If I have to write the text file, I don't see how it's all that much of an improvement over just writing the GUI code to begin with.  Of course once you have the load/save of GUI layouts worked out, it's just a "simple" matter of making a GUI to create the layouts after that.
> 
> You are perfectly right here. The whole concept was done with
> "glade" in mind. I like the idea of separating form and function.
> For me personally, using xemacs in XML mode is already
> "GUI enough"
> 
>> Other question I have is -- doesn't SWT already have something for creating GUI layouts?
>>
> Hmm, nothing that Frank so far commented about.
> 
> Ciao
> TomD

There was some stuff about "XSWT" going on. I don't know how it is related to the Eclipse/VEP and/or if it is alive.

Bill Baxter wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 5:47 AM, TomD <t_demmer@nospam.web.de> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I have uploaded xwt to
>> http://demmer.kilu.de/Software/xwt_20090305.zip
>>
>> This is an extensible library that parses the XML description
>> of a GUI. It is based on DWT, the SWT port to D, and Tango. In theory,
>> it should run unaltered on Win32 and Linux, and one day also on OSX.
>>
>> The basic idea is to wrap all widgets into a class that implements a
>> configure method for each widget. During load of the XML tree, the
>> widget tree is built in parallel.
>>
>> I have included a couple of examples, so you get the idea.
>>
>> Feedback&bug reports welcome.
> 
> I was hoping you might get some comments on this.
> It seems to me a lot of people like the idea of XML files to configure
> a gui.  I'm not a big fan of XML, so hard for me to get excited on
> that score.  Also if I'm going to use a text-file gui description
> thing, I'm probably only going to use it because some GUI tool was
> able to spit it out for me automatically.  If I have to write the text
> file, I don't see how it's all that much of an improvement over just
> writing the GUI code to begin with.  Of course once you have the
> load/save of GUI layouts worked out, it's just a "simple" matter of
> making a GUI to create the layouts after that.
> 
> Other question I have is -- doesn't SWT already have something for
> creating GUI layouts?
> 
> --bb

There are two eclipse plugins, VisualEditor from eclipse and WindowBuilder. Both are GUI builders and there is no xml involved. WindowBuilder is far superior but it's neither open source or free.