From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9920CBDE6 for ; Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:29:36 +0200 (CEST) Received: from pauillac.inria.fr (pauillac.inria.fr [128.93.11.35]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id j7UGTZjw018949 for ; Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:29:35 +0200 Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA19612 for ; Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:29:35 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from ciao.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.229.2]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id j7UGTYKU008636 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:29:34 +0200 Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1EA8wr-0005oZ-2I for caml-list@inria.fr; Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:26:57 +0200 Received: from 0x50a5bb8d.odnxx9.adsl-dhcp.tele.dk ([80.165.187.141]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:26:57 +0200 Received: from spam by 0x50a5bb8d.odnxx9.adsl-dhcp.tele.dk with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:26:57 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: caml-list@inria.fr From: Bardur Arantsson Subject: Re: Does LablTk have a future? Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:21:06 +0200 Message-ID: References: <4311DA63.4010104@havenrock.com> <200508301248.24026.jon@ffconsultancy.com> <3d13dcfc0508300522334c02b8@mail.gmail.com> <200508301445.08793.jon@ffconsultancy.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 0x50a5bb8d.odnxx9.adsl-dhcp.tele.dk User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (X11/20050803) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en In-Reply-To: <200508301445.08793.jon@ffconsultancy.com> Sender: news X-Miltered: at nez-perce with ID 4314896F.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 4314896E.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; labltk:01 kde:01 macos:01 bidi:01 widget:01 subset:01 sdu:01 ...:98 dnd:98 awake:98 dog:98 wrote:01 wrote:01 short:01 interaction:01 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.3 (2005-04-27) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=disabled version=3.0.3 Jon Harrop wrote: > On Tuesday 30 August 2005 13:22, David MENTRE wrote: > >>2005/8/30, Jon Harrop : >> >>>Incidentally, OpenGL is extremely important for us. So a GUI toolkit must >>>be able to handle OpenGL widgets. Indeed, this begs the question: why not >>>do the whole thing in OpenGL? >> [--snip--] >>And because you loose >>the ability to have native interface on all paltforms (Gnome, KDE, >>Windows 2k, Windows XP, MacOS X, ...). > > > Yes but we gain the ability to have a better interface on all platforms. > Nonsense. For special cases it may appear that writing a GUI toolkit is easy. What everbody seems to forget whenever this discussion comes up is that writing a GUI toolkit that's useful for *general* use is hard. Very hard. You need to worry about such things as BiDi, accessibility, feel-compatibility with the "host" platform (ie. things like identical focus handling, interaction with other programs through DnD, etc. etc.), proper widget design, etc. etc. In short: The solution seems easy to you because you're only seeing a subset of the problem. Just a small real life example of why not to do this: The Mozilla people wrote their own GUI toolkit and after all these years they *still* haven't been able to fix all the focus problems. (Note: They actually had valid reasons for doing so, among other things the fact that none of the GUI toolkits at the time could do some of the things required for full standards compliance.) -- Bardur Arantsson Dyslexic, agnostic insomniac: One who lies awake at night wondering if there really is a dog. Anonymous