Re: [Chicken-users] cross-platform gui toolkit

[Brandon J. Van Every]

felix winkelmann wrote:
> On 2/5/07, Brandon J. Van Every <address@hidden> wrote:
> > And why would you prefer a little bit of every toolkit, as opposed to
> > picking 1 toolkit and doing a good job wrapping all its functionality?
> > If you target every toolkit out there, then it'll be capable of very
> > little.  Too trivial for more than toys.
>
> Dependencies are the problem. By allowing multiple configurations
> you will serve a greater number of users and platforms.

You serve a greater number of platforms.  The number of *users* you get, 
depends on how many people find the library useful.  You could be better 
off just taking a % of a major library community, such as WxWidgets or Qt.


> Also, wrapping a
> complete toolkit you just end up with a huge glob of wrapper code that
> is constantly out of date as you try to cover all corners (even the 
> quickly
> changing ones, i.e. more obscure pieces).

If you write your own huge GUI project from scratch, you still have a 
huge glob of code that is constantly out of date.  The question is 
whether you have a large number of people working on the problem.  
Leveraging an entire mature community can be worth more here.  You may 
be better off improving Chicken's binding technologies.

If you cover lotsa different GUIs, you still have a lot of code going 
out of date, chasing all the different projects around.  I don't see how 
you avoid things going out of date, if you have massive numbers of 
external dependencies.  Doesn't matter if those dependencies are broad 
or deep.

> I don't need a super GUI. I just want some portable means of creating
> basic, simple GUIs (call them toys, if you want). 

Has any GUI toolkit ever aspired to the minimalism you have in mind?

> Add a basic 2D graphics
> API, you can then create all the widgets in the world.

Which does most people no good, as nothing will be standard for a long time.

> Binding Qt takes too much time, Qt is a big dependency for those who
> prefer Gnomish desktops, Qt is too large for some systems. Qt is also 
> quite
> slow. Qt is proprietary.

Bind something else then.  I didn't say I cared about Qt.

> What I've found out so far: the one true C/C++ (native) gui toolkit 
> does not
> exist, so I'd rather not bet a bunch of work on wxWidgets or Qt.

It may not exist for a good reason.  Like, people don't want simple, 
minimalist GUI toolkits.  They want full-featured ones that they can 
write every piece of enterprise software they have in mind.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every