Re: [boost] [gui] Help with a little experiment.

Subject: Re: [boost] [gui] Help with a little experiment.
From: Giorgio Zoppi (giorgio.zoppi_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-06-21 04:43:42

2011/6/18 Germán Diago <germandiago_at_[hidden]>:
> Hello. I'm trying to implement a little experiment of what I see should
> be the future of c++ guis. For that I'm going to need a handful of
> proto and fusion, and I have some questions. Besides that, there
> have been many times that a GUI for boost has been discussed.
> As I have some questions and something to expose, I thought it would
> be a good idea to post this message in both boost users and boost developers.
>
>
> I don't have an entire proposal for this, but for now I'm experimenting
> how a GUI framework should look like in my opinion.
>
> My opinion is that it should be AS declarative as possible, so, taking
> as a backend the gtk framework, I came with a syntax like the following
> one:
>
> #define CONTROLLER_CLASS GuiController
> #include <Gui/Layout.h>
> #include <iostream>
>
>
>
> class GuiController {
>        void onEntryChanged(Entry & entry) {
>                auto text = entry.getText();
>                std::cout << text << std::endl;
>        }
>
>        void onButtonClick(Button & button) {
>                std::cout << "Button was clicked" << std::endl;
>        }
> };
>
>
>
> auto gui_definition =
> Window(title="Hello, world!") <<
>        VBox(expand=true) <<
>                HBox(expand=true) <<
>                        Label(text="Name:") && Entry[SLOT(onEntryChanged)])
>                << End(HBox);
>                << Button(text="hello")[SLOT(onButtonClick)];
>        << End(VBox)
> << End(Window);
>
>
> The properties are mapped to objects like title corresponding to the gtk
> properties. The << operator means insert into and the << End(WidgetName)
> means that no more widgets should be inserted inside that closed widget.
> The && operator means put widgets at the same level. Regarding signals,
> they're put inside operator[]. That gui definition would be used like this
>
>
> template <class UI, class Controller>
> ?? createGUI(UIDefinition & ui_def, Controller & controller);
>
>
> int main(int argc, char * argv[]) {
>        GuiController controller;
>        auto window = createGUI(gui_definition, controller);
>
>        window.show_all();
>        window.run();
> }
>
>
> The function createGUI would generate a GUI from the definition and
>  it would bind SLOTS automagically. It's very little code making use of
> a DSEL. The problem is that I must learn a lot of proto to code this,
> but if it works, do you think it would be an improvement? It's all
> compiler-checkable
> and the code is very short.

Ok. I would prefer a XAML mapping.It has been used with success in the
.NET world and it is standard. It seems that you are reiventing
gtkmm:).