Re: [boost] Thoughts for a GUI (Primitives) Library

Subject: Re: [boost] Thoughts for a GUI (Primitives) Library
From: Gwenio (urulokiurae_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-09-06 20:16:29

On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Yakov Galka <ybungalobill_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> Yes, I think that all of us understand your intent, so you don't have to
> repeat it again. The problem is that there are *already* many low-level
> libraries with "multi-platform interface" (wxWidgets, Qt, omgui, gtkmm, and
> more...). To do a better design you should analyze why their design is
> wrong, what problems you want to solve and come up with a design that
> solves
> these problems. Almost everything you said till now doesn't differ
> conceptually from existing libraries, except the iostream analogy which is
> good and reminds Notus ideas.
>
> I've been for the quest of "how a good gui library should look" for about a
> year. However I could tell only counter-examples for a good library. I
> still
> don't have a grasp of the whole design. It's good that you opened this
> conversation here because:
> 1) As Daniel said two people is the perfect size of a team to agree on a
> design, however making a good design requires much more thought, IMO.
> 2) Some libraries that people mentioned here and I wasn't aware of, added
> to
> my understanding of the topic (again: notus, Adam&Eve).
>
> My claim is that you should think of higher level stuff and the low-level
> will come later. Think of event passing and model/view binding. Think of
> what concept should be there to make it possible to the same logic to
> operate with a dialog with "native" look, "uniform" look or even drawn with
> OpenGL on a single canvas in some computer game menu. How to design these
> to
> make all the three co-exist in a single application?

I repeat that I am focusing on the low-level components because I do not
want the discussion to get stuck on what appears to be a very difficult
subject.
Therefore I would like discussion of higher level parts to be limited to
what would be required to implement them.
For Boost and the Standard Library, a good GUI design would be usable in as
many types of applications as possible; while a good design for the back end
will support as many designs for a GUI as possible.