Re: Widget rendering in GNUstep

[Christopher Armstrong]

On Wed, 2005-09-14 at 17:12 -0700, Chris Meredith wrote:

> I'm wondering how controls are rendered using GNUstep under Win32 as,  
> due to the fact that I have no eyesight, I use adaptive technology to  
> read the screen.  If standard Windows controls--or, at the very  
> least, native Win32 APIs are used to draw the controls, I can make  
> them work.  If, on the other hand, they're drawn using some third  
> party API (something X11ish), this may create a problem or five.  As  
> a reference point, the MSYS shell does not work unless I run it as a  
> console application rather than through ... XRVT, I think it is?.

They are rendered using the Win32 GDI API. This is a native Win32 API,
but not the API used for normal Win32 controls. This means that
everything is drawn using vector "objects" (lines, rectangles, region
filling, font drawing etc), as opposed to native Win32 objects (Buttons,
ComboBoxes, etc). It may be possible to read what font's are rendered,
as I think they use the Window's API instead of something like freetype.

> All else failing, Cocoa and its  standard suite of controls talk  
> nicely.  Are there any stumbling blocks making code written for Cocoa  
> run on GNUstep, given the real possibility of not having the ability  
> to have a GNUstep test environment?
> 

Although Cocoa and GNUstep originate from the same API, and GNUstep
tries to implement what is new in Cocoa, they are not exactly the same,
and some common parts are a little bit different. There will be
stumbling blocks, but what they are depends on exactly what you need to
achieve.


I hope this helps.

-- 
Christopher Armstrong <quineska AT ___ gamebox Dot NET