Re: want opinions: GUI building environments

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <Pine.GSO.3.92.960911175806.19415C-100000@nunic.nu.edu>, Richard Riehle <rriehle@nunic.nu.edu> writes:
> On Fri, 6 Sep 1996, dave wrote:
> 
>> If anyone has strong opinions or suggestions about Ada-based GUI
>> development environments, please let me know.
>>
>> The best product I have seen information about so far, seems to be
>> ObjectAda from Thomson.  Does anyone have any experience with this?
> 
>   There is a product on the way from RR Software that is a "thick"
>   binding to Windows 95 and Windows NT.  It is somewhat similar to
>   Microsoft Foundation Class (maybe a little higher level even than
>   MFC) and should work, when ready, with Thomson's compiler, GNAT,
>   RR Software's compiler, as well as any other Win 95/NT compiler.

I may be missing context from the initial post, and I do not wish
to belittle either of the products mentioned, but what I would really
like is portability between operating systems.  I need to do the same
sort of thing on multiple operating systems, and it would be possible
to have common GUI code do _most_ of it, but there are little nits on
each platform and I am worried about having those overlooked (by me
or by a vendor) in the quest for portability.

For instance, I was reading through the MacApp C++ class library
description, and given that MacApp is from Apple it covers all the
Macintosh-specific nits which might not exist on another platform.
I am not sure if AppleGuide coach marks are among those nits, but
that is an example of a platform-specific feature one is expected
to support by platform zealots.

For Motif the new Common Desktop Environment (which looks like a wide
version of the old LaunchPad on OS/2) expects applications to take
certain actions with regard to saving state on logout.

I know so little about OS/2 that I am sure there must also be some
nits there which do not exist in other GUI environments and thus
might be missed in a general GUI development tool.

So my desire would be for a GUI development environment which had
a winning approach for sorting out these differences, so the result
is a program capable of passing muster with a true Defender of the Faith
for each of the GUI environments on the market.

Larry Kilgallen