[boost] Re: UI++ [was: GUI sublanguage;Re: GUI/GDI templatelibrary]

From: Craig Perras (craigp_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-08-09 22:20:09

If you haven't seen Fresco (successor to InterViews) before, I think it has a lot of interesting ideas. http://www.fresco.org/ 

I've heard a couple competing ideas; either wraping native widgets or writing the widgets from scratch (both is a possibility too, of course). Either way I think it would be worthwhile to conside reusing existing low-level cross-platform libraries. For the former, wxWindows has been mentioned; for the latter, there's SDL, OpenGL, and many others (I wouldn't suggest DirectX; SDL wraps it very nicely, and DirectX is obviously not cross-platform). 

Many more ideas could be explored and prototypes built by reusing these existing libraries, rather than (IMHO) wasting cycles reinventing the wheel implementing low-level compatibility libraries. 

Once there's consensus on a design, the question of  'level 0' libraries could be revisited. I think, in any case, Novus should be flexible enough to allow end-users to choose which rendering library they want to link with. I certainly don't want to be stuck with MFC or DirectX! 

Thanks,
--craig