Re: GUI with Ada?

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:44:54 -0600, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:

> I have not kept up with Ada for sometime. I was wondering, if someone wants 
> to develop a simple GUI (plots, menus, buttons, graphs, etc..) using Ada, 
> and have the code compile to a .exe on windows and linux, which is the 
> current most popular software pieces needed for the GUI?

I guess that among portable frameworks the most popular ones with Ada
bindings are Gtk, Qt.

> Assuming I will be using GNAT. Which gcc version should I be using these 
> days which has the latest Ada support in it? Should I be using gcc directly 
> for Ada programming these days, or use GNAT GPL 2009 version from Libre web 
> site http://libre.adacore.com/libre/ ?

AFAIK, for GtkAda either would go.

> I know there are few choices for the GUI, and just wanted to check what is 
> the "best" choice do you think for that.  One with a GUI builder would be 
> nice (i.e. where one can pick the components and lay them out to design the 
> interface). This will be an school program, nothing commercial. I wanted to 
> try to write some basic finite element code in Ada, but need a GUI part for 
> the simulation part.

As for Gtk, it has such a tool GLADE. I am using Gtk for a long time, but I
never felt any desire or necessity to use GLADE. I prefer to go rather OO,
designing custom widgets derived from Gtk containers, which is fairly
simple in Gtk (while many other things, trivial in other GUI frameworks are
unnecessary difficult in Gtk).

Gtk has a widget sizing model somewhat similar to TeX, this is an approach
in its core opposite to the GUI design tool. Imagine a text editor, in
which you would move each word of the text around paper in a way the sorts
were used in typesetting? Admittedly a design tool gives you some
approximate result quicker. But it is never good and never scalable.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de