From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id DAA06080; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 03:08:06 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id DAA06096 for ; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 03:08:04 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from sunny.pacific.net.au (sunny.pacific.net.au [203.25.148.40]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id g3O182P01652 for ; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 03:08:02 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from wisma.pacific.net.au (wisma.pacific.net.au [210.23.129.72]) by sunny.pacific.net.au with ESMTP id g3O17XXt018836; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 11:07:33 +1000 (EST) Received: from ozemail.com.au (ppp59.dyn146.pacific.net.au [210.23.146.59]) by wisma.pacific.net.au with ESMTP id LAA12683; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 11:07:25 +1000 (EST) Message-ID: <3CC6054C.7000502@ozemail.com.au> Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 11:07:24 +1000 From: John Max Skaller User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.2.1) Gecko/20010901 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Oliver Bandel CC: Tim Freeman , willb@cs.wisc.edu, stf@apl.it, caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCamlSDL References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Oliver Bandel wrote: > >Tk is designed for interactive GUI-Applications. And, yes, >it provides graphical output with the canvas-widget. > But there is no tree widget, and that is a mandatory widget. So Tk is broken, and not worth fixing. Of course, there is a tree widget in TiX. Then again, Tk isn't thread safe... the current version of Tcl is thread safe, but Oustermann has said Tk is beyond hope. He're right. It is a very bad toolkit by modern standards. Tk has to go. Its rubbish. There are several alternatives. 1. wxWindows -- C++ based but can be bound into other languages. It is also somewhat archaic, but probably the best C/C++ level portable GUI around. 2. GTK. Isn't mature or well ported yet. I'm using a GTK based mailer now .. and believe me, the text editing is very bad still. 3. Swing. Portable but Java based. 4. OpenGL. Designed for 3D, not really having 2D widget toolkit, Standardised, originally produced by the top graphics company for high performance motion. The simple fact is the kind of static 2D GUI we're using now is already archaic. Something designed for 3D and for motion is a clear winner, because that is how interfaces are going. If you don't know about that, you should play more computer games. Checkout animated cursors drag and drop fading windows and sliding panels features added to Windows and even Linux GUI systems. Wake up. 3D motion is where it is at. The lack of buttons is not an obstacle. They can be BUILT from the right portable 3d motion primitives and given a rich variety of behaviours, not constrained by stupid special cases of existing GUI tool kits. If you want to find some data in a modern system, you're NOT going to find it by clicking thru some stupid menu. Nope. You're going to WALK thru a scene to a place the information is stored. Sure, such interfaces are premature. But Ocaml can get a head start by making 3D motion standard. That way people might start writing stuff that uses it. Right now, I will not write any gui stuff simply because there are no interfaces available worth using. I'd love to see that change. -- John Max Skaller, mailto:skaller@ozemail.com.au snail:10/1 Toxteth Rd, Glebe, NSW 2037, Australia. voice:61-2-9660-0850 ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners