Everyone agrees that D needs a standard gui. I think it's time to put all the wood behind one arrow, to borrow some Microsoft-speak.

DWT is a port of SWT, http://www.eclipse.org/swt/. Here's the dsource forum link: http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1169 and the dsource project link: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dwt/

First, let me start off by saying my knowledge about GUI's and their design tradeoffs is nearly nonexistent. But the D community is small, and so in the selection of a GUI one criterion stands out above all others: LEVERAGE. With a long enough lever, one person can move a mountain. So it's not about the mountain with the best view, it's about the mountain with an adequate view and the longest lever on it.

SWT seems to have the longest lever:

1) It's written in Java, which is the easiest code to translate to D besides C, perhaps even easier (no macros <g>). Furthermore, Kris has written a tool to automate some of the translation. Automated translation from C++ is essentially impossible.

2) Ports of SWT exist for all the platforms we care about. If new GUI platforms of significance emerge, it's likely that the Eclipse org will do an SWT port to it, that we can then leverage for D.

3) The SWT license allows us to use it for D.

4) SWT is part of Eclipse, meaning it has heavy industry support and so is, in many ways, already a standard and is unlikely to go away.

5) Conversion of SWT to DWT can maintain the original design and layout nearly intact. This is big implications - such as DWT can also leverage the books, documentation, and tutorials already written for SWT.

6) Shawn Liu, in an incredible one man effort, has produced DWT for Windows. He's proven it will work for D.

7) DWT for Mac OS X is being worked on by Carlos, and for Linux by JJR. (These two efforts can certainly use a hand from any volunteers!)

8) DWT is written in D, not as a shell around some other language, so it helps validate D as a real language.

I believe that DWT is the best chance for D to get a comprehensive, portable, top quality GUI given our limited resources. It's already there for Windows. It's time we jumped on the bandwagon and give it the momentum it needs. Thoughts?

Walter Bright wrote:
> 
> I believe that DWT is the best chance for D to get a comprehensive, portable, top quality GUI given our limited resources. It's already there for Windows. It's time we jumped on the bandwagon and give it the momentum it needs. Thoughts? 

I'm not much of a GUI person either, but I agree with your assessment.


Sean

"Walter Bright" <newshound@digitalmars.com> wrote:

> I believe that DWT is the best chance for D to get a comprehensive, portable, top quality GUI given our limited resources. It's already there for Windows. It's time we jumped on the bandwagon and give it the momentum it needs. Thoughts?

Yes:

* This is surely a good thing in the long run.

* It's refreshing (for me) to see some direction being touted.

* FWIW, here's what the executive-director of the Eclipse Foundation said about porting last summer:

<snip>
My view of the licensing issue is pretty simple. A port to another language
would be a derivative work, and must therefore be licensed under the EPL.
Assuming that this is acceptable to you, I don't see an issue."

AFAIK, there is no restriction on using "SWT" as an acronym </snip>


(the EPL is an open license)

Walter Bright wrote:

[snip]

> 1) It's written in Java, which is the easiest code to translate to D besides C, perhaps even easier (no macros <g>). Furthermore, Kris has written a tool to automate some of the translation. Automated translation from C++ is essentially impossible.

[snip]

> 6) Shawn Liu, in an incredible one man effort, has produced DWT for Windows. He's proven it will work for D.

[snip]

> I believe that DWT is the best chance for D to get a comprehensive, portable, top quality GUI given our limited resources. It's already there for Windows. It's time we jumped on the bandwagon and give it the momentum it needs. Thoughts? 

I'm trying to reconcile #1 and #6 above.  Do we use Kris's translation tool and make 'SWT in D' or do we use Shawn's hand-translated code and make 'DWT' or do we have both (for a little while, at least)?  I haven't heard much about Kris's tool recently, and efforts are underway to extend DWT's platforms, so I'm not sure myself, just curious.

It would seem to me the translation tool makes a bunch of sense, because of the effort involved when SWT 4.6 comes out and we've only begun to hand-port DWT from SWT 3.8...

Oh bony-white assed one?  How's the translator looking?

Other than that issue, I'm happy to see some direction (from someone of influence) as well, and couldn't agree more with the OP.

BA

In article <drui05$1vfu$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Brad Anderson says...
>
>Walter Bright wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>> 1) It's written in Java, which is the easiest code to translate to D besides C, perhaps even easier (no macros <g>). Furthermore, Kris has written a tool to automate some of the translation. Automated translation from C++ is essentially impossible.
>
>[snip]
>
>> 6) Shawn Liu, in an incredible one man effort, has produced DWT for Windows. He's proven it will work for D.
>
>[snip]
>
>> I believe that DWT is the best chance for D to get a comprehensive, portable, top quality GUI given our limited resources. It's already there for Windows. It's time we jumped on the bandwagon and give it the momentum it needs. Thoughts?
>
>I'm trying to reconcile #1 and #6 above.  Do we use Kris's translation tool and make 'SWT in D' or do we use Shawn's hand-translated code and make 'DWT' or do we have both (for a little while, at least)?  I haven't heard much about Kris's tool recently, and efforts are underway to extend DWT's platforms, so I'm not sure myself, just curious.
>
>It would seem to me the translation tool makes a bunch of sense, because of the effort involved when SWT 4.6 comes out and we've only begun to hand-port DWT from SWT 3.8...

Not to be redundant, but here's my $0.02:

In a perfect world, Kris and Shawn would simply collaborate on getting an automated translation to work, with the addition of a few hand-coded bits where needed.  This would take advantage of the full field of experience between these two gentlemen, and the end-result would be a single (and well-done) SWT port. Maybe there's room for collaboration here; I'd like to think so.

I've gone on the record before about this: I strongly feel that using as much automation as is prudent (following the 80/20 rule) will help ensure the health of a D SWT port.  This way, the library can more easily track changes in the original codebase.  Such a nimble maintainence policy is *essential* to the overarching goal here: leveraging SWT's niche.

>
>Oh bony-white assed one?  How's the translator looking?

Careful.  After that last thread, the last thing I'd want to do is poke him in the eye. ;)

>Other than that issue, I'm happy to see some direction (from someone of influence) as well, and couldn't agree more with the OP.

Seconded.

- Eric Anderton at yahoo

"pragma" <pragma_member@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:drujts$20j4$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> In a perfect world, Kris and Shawn would simply collaborate on getting an
> automated translation to work, with the addition of a few hand-coded bits
> where
> needed.  This would take advantage of the full field of experience between
> these
> two gentlemen, and the end-result would be a single (and well-done) SWT
> port.
> Maybe there's room for collaboration here; I'd like to think so.

I think there is, too.

> I've gone on the record before about this: I strongly feel that using as
> much
> automation as is prudent (following the 80/20 rule) will help ensure the
> health
> of a D SWT port.  This way, the library can more easily track changes in
> the
> original codebase.  Such a nimble maintainence policy is *essential* to
> the
> overarching goal here: leveraging SWT's niche.

I also believe that given the huge size of SWT, relying on automation as much as possible is the most likely route to success. In other words, DWT should make no attempt to fix design problems in SWT, nor should it make an attempt to do things the D way rather than the Java way (other than the obvious like replacing java.lang.String with char[], etc.). It should just translate the code in as straightforward a manner as possible. There should be a 1:1 mapping between SWT source files and DWT files.

"pragma" <pragma_member@pathlink.com> wrote ...
>>I'm trying to reconcile #1 and #6 above.  Do we use Kris's translation tool and make 'SWT in D' or do we use Shawn's hand-translated code and make 'DWT' or do we have both (for a little while, at least)?  I haven't heard much about Kris's tool recently, and efforts are underway to extend DWT's platforms, so I'm not sure myself, just curious.
>>
>>It would seem to me the translation tool makes a bunch of sense, because of the effort involved when SWT 4.6 comes out and we've only begun to hand-port DWT from SWT 3.8...

I don't think Walter was suggesting we redo DWT-Wiin32? Rather, I suspect he meant a translation tool may provide a jump-start on the GTK and OS-X versions? If, at some future point, Shawn finds himself wallowing in update-hell, then it may be appropriate to consider options at that time?

However, there's more to it than that. I thought JJR made a wonderfully honest and succinct post over at dsource.org (in the DWT forum), regarding the problems of being a sole-developer on a project of this magnitude. This is hopefully where the community can help?


>
> Not to be redundant, but here's my $0.02:
>
> In a perfect world, Kris and Shawn would simply collaborate on getting an
> automated translation to work, with the addition of a few hand-coded bits
> where
> needed.  This would take advantage of the full field of experience between
> these
> two gentlemen, and the end-result would be a single (and well-done) SWT
> port.
> Maybe there's room for collaboration here; I'd like to think so.

I think that would be great. Shawn and I had discussed it ages ago, but he was already on his way. Once you start doing a manual-translation, you generally don't feel like starting over.


> I've gone on the record before about this: I strongly feel that using as
> much
> automation as is prudent (following the 80/20 rule) will help ensure the
> health
> of a D SWT port.  This way, the library can more easily track changes in
> the
> original codebase.  Such a nimble maintainence policy is *essential* to
> the
> overarching goal here: leveraging SWT's niche.

Aye. However, it's not necessary to track SWT on a release by release basis. I know you're not saying that, but it's just a related point worth noting?


>>Oh bony-white assed one?  How's the translator looking?
>
> Careful.  After that last thread, the last thing I'd want to do is poke
> him in
> the eye. ;)

Heh heh :)

That "translator" is a hack of wondrous proportions, Brad. Hasn't changed much. I did use it the other weekend to port another of Doug Lea's uber-vorks, and it helped enormously. But it's not a panacea ~ just handles all the grunt work (I recall it made around 22,000 changes to the SWT codebase of ~450 files). There's a second-pass needed to handle codebase-specific changes, but Java readily lends itself to mechanical conversion.


>
>>Other than that issue, I'm happy to see some direction (from someone of influence) as well, and couldn't agree more with the OP.
>
> Seconded.

And third'd

In article <drubut$1rs8$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Kris says...
>
>"Walter Bright" <newshound@digitalmars.com> wrote:
>
>> I believe that DWT is the best chance for D to get a comprehensive, portable, top quality GUI given our limited resources. It's already there for Windows. It's time we jumped on the bandwagon and give it the momentum it needs. Thoughts?
>
>Yes:
>
>* This is surely a good thing in the long run.
>
>* It's refreshing (for me) to see some direction being touted.
>
>* FWIW, here's what the executive-director of the Eclipse Foundation said about porting last summer:
>
><snip>
>My view of the licensing issue is pretty simple. A port to another language
>would be a derivative work, and must therefore be licensed under the EPL.
>Assuming that this is acceptable to you, I don't see an issue."
>
>AFAIK, there is no restriction on using "SWT" as an acronym </snip>
>
>
>(the EPL is an open license)
>

I looked at the EPL, but it seems predicated toward applications (like Eclipse) and not libraries (like S/DWT), so it wasn't clear to me what the EPL means to me as a potential 'closed source' developer who may use DWT to develop an app.

Can you (or anyone) enlighten me on this?

Thanks,

- Dave

"Dave" <Dave_member@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:druo2h$2366$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> I looked at the EPL, but it seems predicated toward applications (like
> Eclipse)
> and not libraries (like S/DWT), so it wasn't clear to me what the EPL
> means to
> me as a potential 'closed source' developer who may use DWT to develop an
> app.
>
> Can you (or anyone) enlighten me on this?

Here's the FAQ on the EPL: http://www.eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php

Whoever you are, you can stop spoofing as Walter.

If on the other hand this isn't a joke, I think it's a wonderful idea.

-S.


On 2006-02-02 16:53:26 -0800, "Walter Bright" <newshound@digitalmars.com> said:

> Everyone agrees that D needs a standard gui. I think it's time to put all the wood behind one arrow, to borrow some Microsoft-speak.
> 
> DWT is a port of SWT, http://www.eclipse.org/swt/. Here's the dsource forum link: http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1169 and the dsource project link: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dwt/
> 
> First, let me start off by saying my knowledge about GUI's and their design tradeoffs is nearly nonexistent. But the D community is small, and so in the selection of a GUI one criterion stands out above all others: LEVERAGE. With a long enough lever, one person can move a mountain. So it's not about the mountain with the best view, it's about the mountain with an adequate view and the longest lever on it.
> 
> SWT seems to have the longest lever:
> 
> 1) It's written in Java, which is the easiest code to translate to D besides C, perhaps even easier (no macros <g>). Furthermore, Kris has written a tool to automate some of the translation. Automated translation from C++ is essentially impossible.
> 
> 2) Ports of SWT exist for all the platforms we care about. If new GUI platforms of significance emerge, it's likely that the Eclipse org will do an SWT port to it, that we can then leverage for D.
> 
> 3) The SWT license allows us to use it for D.
> 
> 4) SWT is part of Eclipse, meaning it has heavy industry support and so is, in many ways, already a standard and is unlikely to go away.
> 
> 5) Conversion of SWT to DWT can maintain the original design and layout nearly intact. This is big implications - such as DWT can also leverage the books, documentation, and tutorials already written for SWT.
> 
> 6) Shawn Liu, in an incredible one man effort, has produced DWT for Windows. He's proven it will work for D.
> 
> 7) DWT for Mac OS X is being worked on by Carlos, and for Linux by JJR. (These two efforts can certainly use a hand from any volunteers!)
> 
> 8) DWT is written in D, not as a shell around some other language, so it helps validate D as a real language.
> 
> I believe that DWT is the best chance for D to get a comprehensive, portable, top quality GUI given our limited resources. It's already there for Windows. It's time we jumped on the bandwagon and give it the momentum it needs. Thoughts?