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 04:50:18

It too complex for me. It will simpler in the following way:

<StackPanel>
  <StackPanel.Children>
    <!--<UIElementCollection>-->
    <Button Click="ButtonClick1">First Button</Button>
    <Button Click="ButtonClick1">Second Button</Button>
    <!--</UIElementCollection>-->
  </StackPanel.Children>
</StackPanel>
And then in your glue code handles the event.

2011/6/21 Germán Diago <germandiago_at_[hidden]>:
> El 21/06/11 10:14, Artyom Beilis escribió:
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----
>>>
>>> From: Mathias Gaunard<mathias.gaunard_at_[hidden]>
>>> To: boost_at_[hidden]
>>> Sent: Mon, June 20, 2011 12:09:50 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [boost] [gui] Help with a little experiment.
>>>
>>> On 18/06/2011 16:55, Artyom Beilis wrote:
>>>
>>>> Making a GUI library is  not about providing
>>>> nice syntactic sugar for building layout.
>>>>
>>>> Syntactic sugar is the last thing that should interest  you.
>>>
>>> Having a short and concise declarative definition of your GUI has
>>>  several
>>> advantages.
>>> It's easier to validate it, it allows to avoid bugs, and  you can really
>>> materialize
>>> the intent of what you want instead of coding its  logic directly.
>>>
>>> Moreover, writing GUIs is very tedious and uninteresting.  It would be
>>> nice
>>> if it were possible to automate more things.
>>
>> Few points.
>>
>> If you want an easy and fast declare GUI there are many RAD tools like
>> QtCreator
>>
>> or
>> Glade that do this job well.
>>
>> On the other hand. When I was programming some GUI tools the **easiest**
>> part
>> was to write a code that makes the layout and connects widgets...
>>
>> The hard part was to write the actions that should be done behind the
>> widgets.
>>
>> Today when I write production code I think about users who are going to
>> maintain
>> it. And readability and clearness is very big concern.
>>
>> See:
>>
>> http://developer.qt.nokia.com/wiki/API_Design_Principles
>>
>> There are 6 primary points:
>>
>>   * Be minimal
>>   * Be complete
>>   * Have clear and simple semantics
>>   * Be intuitive
>>   * Be easy to memorize
>>   * Lead to readable code
>>
>> Especially this one:
>>
>>   An API is intuitive if a semi-experienced user
>>   gets away without reading the documentation,
>>   and if a programmer who doesn’t know the API
>>   can understand code written using it.
>>
>>
>> IMHO The proposed API does not helps with all this
>> and makes things very obscure for a programmer that is
>> not fully familiar with the toolkit.
>>
>> If I show this code to average C++ programmer the
>> vast majority of them would not know what happens there...
>>
>> The fact that you and 1 percentile
>> of C++ programmers (that write Boost Libraries)
>> understand the proposed code
>> does not mean it is understandable to other.
>>
>> Consider:
>>
>> This
>>
>>> 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);
>>
>> Or this?
>>
>> class MyWindow : public Window {
>>
>>   MyWindow {
>>     setTitle(tr("Hello, World!"));
>>
>>     base_layout = new VBoxLayout();
>>     setLayout(base_layout);
>>        base_layout->sizePolicy(Expand);
>>
>>        top_layout = new HBoxLayout();
>>        base_layout->addItem(top_layout);
>>
>>            top_layout->sizePolicy(Expand);
>>
>>            top_layout->addWdiget(new Label(tr("Name:")));
>>
>>            text = new TextEdit();
>>            top_layour->addWidget(text);
>>
>>        button = new PushBotton(tr("Hello"));
>>        layout->addWidget(button);
>>
>>     connect(text,SIGNAL(valueChanged()),this,SLOT(onEntryChanged());
>>     connect(button,SIGNAL(pressed()),this,SLOT(onButtonClick());
>>   }
>>
>>   void onEntryChanged()
>>   {
>>     std::cout<<text->getText()<<  std::endl;
>>   }
>>
>>   void onButtonClick()
>>   {
>>     std::cout<<  "Button Pressed"<<  std::endl;
>>   }
>>
>> }
>
> I'm trying to make my code readable as well. I changed my initial proposal a
> little,
> but I think that you didn't realize it. Look at it.
>
> And it's easy to follow once you understand the mini-language:
>
> auto gui_def =
> Window(title="Hello,world")[
>         VBox(expand=true)[
>                HBox[Label(text="Dollars:") |
> Entry(changed=BINDING(dollars))],
>                HBox[Label(text="Euros:")   | Entry(changed=BINDING(euros))]
>         ]
> ];
>
> I think that it's easy to follow. You just have to read once what operators
> do (| to separate in boxes).
> It's readable, very readable indeed. And it makes a lot of work in very few
> lines of code == less bugs.
> Of course I must think a lot about many problems I will find along the way
> before making a proposal,
> but being declarative and making code as short as possible while keeping
> readability are
> two choices I think are right. The average programmer just would have to
> learn a mini-language which, compared to the alternative (learning an
> imperative API) is much better.
> Of course, I must think a lot about bindings, signals, slots and all that
> stuff, but my starting point is a
> DSEL and after that I'll try some sort of runtime equivalent to make
> possible dynamic polymorphism.
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