[boost] Re: GUI library - another one

From: Nicola Musatti (nmusatti_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-03-04 03:12:43

Jesse Booher wrote:
[...]
> That said a GUI library is a *HUGE*
> undertaking and other cross platform libraries like wxWidgets have a
> big head start.  Not that this is a race or anything but when it
> comes to GUI libraries, features nearly always trump form.  After all
> an awkward interface is a developer annoyance, whereas a missing
> feature can be a show stopper.

Moreover no GUI framework could make it nowadays without an IDE. How 
would that fit within the Boost concept?

> There is a certain allure to clean slate designs and there may very
> well be no existing open source user interface projects that you
> would consider worthy of your time, but I wondered if you have
> considered any slightly less ambitious alternatives such as creating
> a framework employing components from an existing open source
> project?  It seems to me that the promise of open source development
> is not served when wheels (or widgets) need to be reinvented over and
> over again.

An even better option would be to concentrate on the programatic 
interface between GUI specific code and the heart of the application.
I'm thinking of a library that standardizes how standard C++ code 
interacts with GUI libraries. To give an example, such a library would 
deal with editable text fields by providing hooks for validation and for 
conversion to and from the underlying framework text format, and a 
standard signal to notify change, rather than deal with colour and position.

This is an area where all the GUI frameworks I dealt with are really 
lacking and a similar effort would help reduce the amount of framework 
specific code and support a better structured approach.

Cheers,
Nicola Musatti