Re: [boost] [rfc] cppgui

Subject: Re: [boost] [rfc] cppgui
From: Iain K. Hanson (iain.hanson_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-07-02 00:54:40

Hi,

On Wed, 2009-07-01 at 23:32 -0300, Felipe Magno de Almeida wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 9:08 PM, David Abrahams<dave_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> >
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > Have you looked at Adam and Eve from Adobe,
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > and the associated research papers?
> 
> No. Do you know where can I find it?
They are linked at Adobe's web site.

> 
> >  I think these guys have gone a long way down the road to
> > figuring out how to do things "right" in that domain.
> 
> They did. But they took a very different approach. With another
> language and all.
> Though I understand it can help a lot using a more specific language
> for GUI, I'm not still convinced it is the best approach. I think a
> C++-only, with RAII, exceptions, library can be very easy to use as
> well.
[ snip ]

DSL's are a design concept. Embedding one is a implementation choice
that is not required to learn the lessons of Adam and Eve.

> Though I do have plans for creating a DSEL to model windows in the
> very far future. It would still be C++. No parsers, nor
> highly-dynamic-scripted languages involved.
> I just hope there's space for cppgui's goals after adam and eve.

You might want to look at Interviews first ( www.ivtools.org ) . It also
has papers explaining layout and I *believe* use some of these concepts.
It also had hglue and vglue ( h & V = horizontal and vertical ) which is
where spring tabs comes from ( I think ). This work was later expanded
by Mark Linton in FRESCO ( the original if it is still available on the
net was distributed with a project called TargetJr ) - Not the FRESCO
that morphed into Berlin. It extended Interviews idea of Object linking
and Embedding.

Unidraw ( built on top of Interviews ) extended layout concepts greatly
by using QOCA which is a linear equations and inequalities solver that
could make a reasonable attempt at graph layout ( a very non-trivial
problem not normally associated with GUI's ).

hth

/ikh

-- 
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right
to say it,"
Evelyn Beatrice Hall who wrote under the pseudonym S.G. Tallentyre in
a biography of Voltaire.
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