[boost] Re: boost Windowing Toolkit

From: Greg Colvin (gcolvin_at_[hidden])
Date: 1999-12-12 19:15:40

From: Dave Abrahams <abrahams_at_[hidden]>
> My company is considering releasing a general-purpose, cross-platform
> windowing toolkit to boost (open source, of course). It should serve as a
> basis on top of which a set of higher-level GUI tools could be developed. In
> its current state the code has Win32 and GGI (a low-level Linux graphics
> library) implementations. All the basics are there for a lightweight
> implementation:
> 
> 1. Simple yet powerful cartesian coordinate support (Point, Rectangle with
> operators)
> 2. A coherent and easy-to-use imaging model (e.g. unlike Win32 GDI, there is
> no "selecting objects into DCs", resource management hidden behind the
> scenes, or even any "state" in a drawing environment).
> 3. Pixel maps and blitting with or without masks
> 4. Minimal text support
> 5. Rectangular windows with transparency (allows for any shape)
> 6. Minimal color support
> 7. Insulation from platform-specific header files (e.g. <windows.h> and
> associated #defines stay out of the user naespace)
> 8. An easy way to access platform-specific implementation details when
> neccessary to support platform-specific idioms.
> 9. Some preliminary event queueing support (needs work).
> 
> The implementations are less interesting than the interfaces, which I
> believe provide a powerful set of basics while remaining extensible by not
> committing too much in advance to ideas we are not sure may be needed or
> supported on various platforms.
> 
> There is still work to be done in many areas, however. For some of these, I
> "know" what the answer is; for others I have no clue. In all areas I would
> be open to input. Before we do anything else, though, I'd like to gauge the
> level of interest. Are there members of the boost community be interested in
> developing and extending this work? We don't want to release the toolkit
> just to have it languish and die...

I don't doubt this is great stuff -- but is enough better than Qt to spend
time on, or would be be better off leveraging that already popular and
almost free work?

For those who may not know, Qt is the C++ windowing toolkit underlying the
Linux KDE desktop.  See http://www.troll.no/qt/ and http://www.kde.org/.