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

Subject: Re: [boost] Thoughts for a GUI (Primitives) Library
From: Gwenio (urulokiurae_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-09-02 17:32:38

On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 5:04 PM, Simonson, Lucanus J <
lucanus.j.simonson_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> Have you ever written a GUI framework before?  Have you ever done cross
> platform applications (with a gui) that work with both Mac and Windows, for
> example?  What application domain are you targeting?  Games have pretty
> different requirements from office type applications.  Before you attempt to
> improve on the state of the art be sure you have mastered the state of the
> art and are in a position to make the right calls on what the next steps
> are.
>
> What exactly is wrong with QT and why is dynamic polymorphism, which is bad
> for so many other things, not the correct solution for GUI widgets?  In a
> GUI you almost by definition don't care about runtime overhead because the
> latency requirement gives you plenty of time for everything but a dog slow
> java GUI to be adequately responsive.  Just what is it about a "modern" C++
> design that you think will be to your great benefit?
>
> Arguments about which dialect of C++ to use are about as tired as arguments
> about which programming language to use.  Frankly multi-language application
> environments where C++ provides the back end speed and core logic while some
> scripting language provides the GUI seem to work perfectly fine.  I don't
> really want to do GUI programming at all but I'm not sure I want to do it in
> C++.  From my perspective GUI programming is the scut work you can contract
> out cheaply and get good enough implementations with reasonable turn around
> time.  You don't need an "expert friendly language" for scut work and we
> can't expect the bottom of the barrel programmers who are currently able to
> excel at programming user interfaces to make sense of a boost style GUI
> framework API.
>
> In short you can't argue that a "modern" design for a GUI framework is a
> good design by pure virtue of being new.  You have to state what your design
> goals are and how the design elements you choose achieve those goals better
> than the alternatives.  Remember who your user is when designing a library.
>  If you restrict your user base to people exactly like yourself by making
> design decsions based upon personal preference you will end up with at least
> one happy user of your framework, but by no means good odds of having many
> more.
>
> Regards,
> Luke

My current target right is to create the abstraction layer between the
application and the system. Everything else will be worked on later, once
the minimum requirements for building a GUI library are close to being met.
I am not building everything to my tasts; instead I am posting concepts for
discussion (though no one has responed to them).