Re: A community Windows binding

[Nick Roberts <nick.roberts@acm.org>]

Stephen Leake wrote:

> So far, I've heard from the following:
> ...
>     Nick Roberts
>         willing to work on GWindows

I don't think I actually ever said I would work on GWindows.

;-)

However, I would, in fact, be willing to work on GWindows or CLAW, albeit 
through gritted teeth.

The gritted teeth would be mainly because the GWindows and CLAW interfaces 
are Windows-specific. However, I would reluctantly agree that the 
difficulty of designing and supporting a serious platform-independent GUI 
would be too immense; to do this, it is necessary to write a great deal of 
GUI functionality as part of the implementation, and only use the minimum 
common subset of facilities provided by the various underlying platforms.

GWindows and CLAW are surely both about leveraging as much power from the 
Windows infrastructure as possible. A platform-independent GUI would really 
be a totally different project (worthwhile, but very ambitious).

I was once quite knowledgeable about the Win32 interface, and Windows 
programming in general, but my knowledge is old, and does not stretch, for 
example, to COM (or OLE, ActiveX, and so on). But I can learn!

I think I would be most interested in improving (extending) existing 
documentation, and producing new documentation. What would be the most 
appropriate source format? I might also be interested in producing a sample 
application (or two), big enough to be realistic, but small enough to be 
done quite quickly and serve its pedagogical purpose.

I do not, by any means, have any (personal) favour for GWindows over CLAW, 
or vice versa. I know only a very little about either, so I'm not in a 
position to judge.

-- 
Nick Roberts