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

Subject: Re: [boost] Thoughts for a GUI (Primitives) Library
From: Alexander Lamaison (awl03_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-09-07 14:49:41

On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 09:51:10 -0700, Sebastian Redl wrote: 

> On Sep 7, 2010, at 5:40 AM, Alexander Lamaison wrote: 
> 
>> On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 09:47:03 +0200, Yakov Galka wrote: 
>> 
>>> On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 02:16, Gwenio <urulokiurae_at_[hidden]> wrote: 
>>> 
>>>> I repeat that I am focusing on the low-level components because I do
>>>> not want the discussion to get stuck on what appears to be a very
>>>> difficult subject. Therefore I would like discussion of higher level
>>>> parts to be limited to what would be required to implement them. 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Then *please*, explain how your library will differ from e.g. gtkmm? 
>>> 
>>> link: http://www.gtkmm.org/en/
>> 
>> I hope that, for starters, the end-result would look nothing like that
>> produced by gtkmm.  GTK-based GUIs on Windows just look 'wrong'.
> 
> The visual appearance of programs has very little to do with library
> design. Qt programs look great IMO, but they don't use any native
> widgets even on Windows. They just have a very faithful native l&f. But
> you can style them differently even on Windows. 

On Linux I would say that GTK and QT *are* the native widgets for their
respective desktop environments, Gnome and KDE.  Widgets are native to a
desktop environment rather than an OS and it's only becuase Windows just
has one environment that people talk about native Windows widgets.

> So the question is perfectly valid. IMO it doesn't make any sense to
> design low-level components if you don't have a high-level design. 

The problem is that these are two completely separate things.  Any
high-level framework will be build on top of low-level widgets so at some
point these will need wrapping in a portable manner so at some point this
job has to be done anyway.  Exposing these as a boost library in its own
right means we don't force users to use the high-level concepts if they
prefer not to or prefer to roll their own.

Alex

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