suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, reallysimple GUI prototype

[ik]

On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Ido,
>
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:50 PM, ik <idokan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Dov Grobgeld <dov.grobgeld at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> The advantage of using Qt or Gtk compared with some of the other gui
> >> toolkits mentioned (fltk, Tcl/Tk, SDL, or Matlab GUI) are that they are
> >> complete (lots of widgets, internationalization and localization support
> >> etc) if the prototype turns into something bigger than was initially
> >> envisioned. To often have I seen tools that were written like "oh, its's
> >> only for me" and then a company is trying to figure out how to deploy
> and
> >> support the tool. I therefore thing it is worth taking the time to learn
> >> complexity of one of these GUI's, and then use it.
> >>
> >> The language is a separate issue from the GUI. The difference between Qt
> >> and Gtk is that Qt was from the beginning written to be tighly coupled
> with
> >> C++, whereas gtk (actually the glib model) was written so that it is
> easy to
> >> bind it to various languages. There is even a special GObject (the base
> >> class of gtk) dedicated language. See:
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_%28programming_language%29 . True,
> there
> >> are some bindings to Qt, e.g. the official python binding PySide, but
> the
> >> huge amount of bindings to gtk shows that it is a much easier task.
> >>
> >> In short, decide a language and a toolkit. Take time to learn it. It is
> >> well worth your time.
> >
> >
> > The thing is, that the approach I offered - Lazarus, contain support
> both to
> > Qt and GTK, but you do not care about it in any way, you just focus on
> your
> > task, on the libraries at hand. The libraries are only matter on compile
> and
> > deployment time, not on coding, you do not really use any GTK or Qt code,
> > but focus on an API that exists above this.
>
> The problem is that Lazarus is based on Free Pascal, which may have
> problem wrapping C++ code which is what Oleg wanted originally.
>

I might have misread it, but as I understand, he thinking on C++ because of
the GUI.


>
> >
> > The "fight" aginst Qt vs GTK is nice when you need to focus yourself on
> > lower level development, not with tools that simplify things to you.
>
> "Fight"?
>

All other suggestions are either Qt vs GTK vs FLTK etc...
I offered to ignore the type of all of it.


>
> > Vala, is a very stupid idea. it's a C# like language that is translated
> into
> > C and then built a native code.
>
> Why is it a stupid idea? I recall re-implementing a small Perl program
> (which ran too slowly) in Vala, and it performed much better, so I was
> happy. I have not done any GUI programming in Vala, but translating
> something to C is a valid approach.
>

If what you understood is true, and he is looking for a C++ solutions, why
do you keep offering Python or Vala to him ?
If I understand it, then my solution is better, instead of using a language
to help use a toolkit, I offer a language with tools
that helps you develop GUI without the hassle of choosing the GUI toolkit,
but to focus on your work, and think in DRY land ...

If he choose Glade with GTK, he needs to start to think in grid like way of
writing.
If he chooses Qt with Qt-Develop, he will need to write a template, and
then focus on understanding Qt

I offer something different, different thinking, even know, without any
knowledge of gui development, or even the programming language,
a simple window, edit box, a button and a simple menu will take him less
then 10 minutes. When he'll know to use it, it will take him 3-5 minutes
tops.


>
> > With Lazarus, you program in a real programming language, and instead of
> > using a middleware, you just cod your code, and the GUI is designed
> without
> > any line of code (unless you have to, or just want to do it like that).
> >
>
> Are you implying that Vala is not a "real" programming language?
>

*"Vala* is an object-oriented
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented> programming
language <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language> with a
self-hosting <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting>
compiler<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler>that generates
C <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28programming_language%29> code and uses
the GObject <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GObject> system.  "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_%28programming_language%29

It's a "descriptive" language for C, that was built to help you develop GUI
for GTK, and looks too much like C# (it's actually cool language C#, much
better then Java, but that's off topic).



> Regards,
>
> -- Shlomi Fish
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------
> Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
>
> Electrical Engineering studies. In the Technion. Been there. Done
> that. Forgot a lot. Remember too much.
>
> Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
>
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