GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

[Frank Piron]

Hi to all, who want to spread Ada
in Germany

in the next two years we will develop a client library
for a production Workflow-System. Since we wrote most of
the Server-Code in ORACLE PL/SQL, which is similar to
ADA83, we begun developing a Client-Side Library in
ADA95.

Part of this Library will also be a GUI. We started 
writing GUI-Components with Gwindows and ORACLE-OCI.
So a default Table-Browser with the known MS-Access
like Functionality.

But now we are unsure, wether its mor attractive to
choose GtkAda for the Gui-Components, because then the
Client - Library will compile in Gnu-Linux-Environments too.
Unfortunately GtkAda 1.3.12 ( Windows ) cannot handle
German - Umlaute. Further i did play around with the
"testgtk"-Application for windows and noticed that its
not so stable and smooth as Gwindows is.

Any Experiences in related fields would help !!

Frank Piron

Re: GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

[Adrian Knoth]

Frank Piron <frank.piron@konad.de> wrote:

> But now we are unsure, wether its mor attractive to
> choose GtkAda for the Gui-Components, because then the
> Client - Library will compile in Gnu-Linux-Environments too.

This would be a good ground to start from. I (we) have built a
centralized-administration-poolsystem for running a lot of Linux-Nodes
without the need to maintain every single PC. In combination this
would be an efficient way for companies to handle an enterprise-wide
Linux-installation. One Admin for all, one installation for all, but
speed, security (Kerberos V, AFS) and extensibility (adding a new PC
takes less than five minutes, then it boots right into X)

> Unfortunately GtkAda 1.3.12 ( Windows ) cannot handle
> German - Umlaute. 

Yes, because Gtk 1.3.x does not support UTF8.

You'll need to switch to GTK 2.2 instead, but as far as I know there
is no working windows-port, yet.

You might want to use remote-desktops (running on Linux) or even replace
Windows by this one-to-handle-all-Linux-structure I told you above.

-- 
mail: adi@thur.de  	http://adi.thur.de	PGP: v2-key via keyserver

Wie kommts das am Ende des Geldes noch soviel Monat �brig ist?

Re: GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

[Jeffrey Creem]

"Adrian Knoth" <adi@drcomp.erfurt.thur.de> wrote in message
news:slrnb301sv.4ms.adi@drcomp.erfurt.thur.de...
> Frank Piron <frank.piron@konad.de> wrote:
> > Unfortunately GtkAda 1.3.12 ( Windows ) cannot handle
> > German - Umlaute.
>
> Yes, because Gtk 1.3.x does not support UTF8.
>
> You'll need to switch to GTK 2.2 instead, but as far as I know there
> is no working windows-port, yet.


I'd contact ACT Europe about support for GtkAda/Gtk at 2.2 to see how close
it is. The other night I grabbed the latest 2.2 Gtk+ binaries from
http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html and
the latest GtkAda source code from the http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/
CVS archives
and I was able to configure and run a few test programs under Windows
XP/Mingw.

Re: GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

[Adrian Knoth]

Jeffrey Creem <jeff@thecreems.com> wrote:

> it is. The other night I grabbed the latest 2.2 Gtk+ binaries from
> http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html and
> the latest GtkAda source code from the http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/
> CVS archives and I was able to configure and run a few test programs under 
> Windows XP/Mingw.

So to say, it works?


-- 
mail: adi@thur.de  	http://adi.thur.de	PGP: v2-key via keyserver

Das Gras steht hoch, man kann kaum mehr blicken,
das ist die richtige Zeit zum --- Rasenmaehen.

Re: GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

[Frank Piron]

I will try to build it too, but currently
i'm investigating "rapid" - interesting
approach to get rid of the specialities of
the gui-library. As usual the difficulties
will arise with the details, table-widgets,
validation, synchronization with oci-calls, ...


Adrian Knoth schrieb:
> 
> Jeffrey Creem <jeff@thecreems.com> wrote:
> 
> > it is. The other night I grabbed the latest 2.2 Gtk+ binaries from
> > http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html and
> > the latest GtkAda source code from the http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/
> > CVS archives and I was able to configure and run a few test programs under
> > Windows XP/Mingw.
> 
> So to say, it works?
> 
> --
> mail: adi@thur.de       http://adi.thur.de      PGP: v2-key via keyserver
> 
> Das Gras steht hoch, man kann kaum mehr blicken,
> das ist die richtige Zeit zum --- Rasenmaehen.

Re: GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

[Jeffrey Creem]

Well....I did not find anything broken but that is a far thing from saying
it works!
I had no reason to do this other than to try to guess how close a release
release might be. I suspected if
it were perfect then there would already be a release made from the CVS
archive (if not public then at least some announcement on one of the ACT
webpages)...

"Adrian Knoth" <adi@drcomp.erfurt.thur.de> wrote in message
news:slrnb3298m.8mm.adi@drcomp.erfurt.thur.de...
> Jeffrey Creem <jeff@thecreems.com> wrote:
>
> > it is. The other night I grabbed the latest 2.2 Gtk+ binaries from
> > http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html and
> > the latest GtkAda source code from the
http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/
> > CVS archives and I was able to configure and run a few test programs
under
> > Windows XP/Mingw.
>
> So to say, it works?

Re: GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

[David Marceau]

Jeffrey Creem wrote:
> 
> "Adrian Knoth" <adi@drcomp.erfurt.thur.de> wrote in message
> news:slrnb301sv.4ms.adi@drcomp.erfurt.thur.de...
> > Frank Piron <frank.piron@konad.de> wrote:
> > > Unfortunately GtkAda 1.3.12 ( Windows ) cannot handle
> > > German - Umlaute.
> >
> > Yes, because Gtk 1.3.x does not support UTF8.
Yes UTF8 seems popular.  Many Japanese web sites use shift-jis(utf-8). 
What I find surprising is that I still have to tell my web browser which
encoding I should use for a certain web page. i.e. either french/english
or japanese(shift, euc, iso...).  I thought that was all taken care of a
long-time ago.

> >
> > You'll need to switch to GTK 2.2 instead, but as far as I know there
> > is no working windows-port, yet.
> 
If you find it acceptable using win32/IME and X11 directly side-by-side
with GTK 
you might want to consider looking at Yudit sources for inspiration.
Yudit seems to support German Umlaute and runs on windows.
http://www.yudit.org/download/binary/

For programmer editors IMHO emacs/MULE is hard to beat however when
dealing with non-english american characters, 
I find important that whatever gui programmer/text editor used should
clearly indicated status of the following:
-what file format is my source code saved in(utf-8, as opposed to utf-7
or iso-8859-1 etc...)
-what keyboard input mode am I typing in
-what key encoding is the file being displayed in
Yudit IMHO provides that.
It comforts me to know that I have one editor I do mostly everything
in(EMACS) but sometimes I just want to double-check that I saved my
emacs stuff in the right format(MULE stuff).  Yudit provides this for
me.  In Emacs I tend to forget what display mode, what key-input, what
file-format I'm in and IMHO they are not clearly indicated.

From what I understand, not only does yudit support japanese and
hungarian but the hungarian mode supports German characters.  The
following taken from the Yudit docs:
"
Hungarian
  It maps Hungarian and German characters. The  accented characters 
  can be input with the  English character followed by the accent.
    Examples:
      a' becomes á , o: becomes ö ,  o" becomes �? 
      SS produces the German �Y , Ss  gives the paragraph sign §.
"

Alternative 1)
Yudit depends on libc, libX11/win32IME and the dynamic linker and not on
gtk.  Maybe the tricks used in the Yudit Source Code could be used while
co-existing with GTK < 2.2.  It does defeat the reason for using GTK in
the first place though since you wanted to avoid using different apis on
different platforms.  At least it is an alternative to see your stuff
working with what you have i.e gtk < 2.2 instead of installing a new gtk
along with other dependencies it may have on both linux and windows.

Alternative 2)
They said about X-Window, "build the software and the hardware will
come".  Now I suggest build your software in linux/gtk2.2 and the
windows gtk2.2 will come :)  

Alternative 3)
Ditch windows altogether and start using linux boxes everywhere.  

Alternative 4)
Ditch GTK and consider using commercial software.

Alternative 5)look for other alternatives

Notice how I am going to CYA myself and not suggest which alternative to
go with.  That's up to you :)  Good luck :)

Cheers,
David Marceau

Re: GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

[Frank Piron]

Thanks a lot for your complete analysis.
Alternative 3 is what I'd like to do, but our
customers are not with us.

I will take a serious look at Yudit and at rapid.
Alternative 2 may be an option for the future and
we plan to start a non-critical pilot.

Greetings from Germany, Frank

David Marceau schrieb:
> 
> Jeffrey Creem wrote:
> >
> > "Adrian Knoth" <adi@drcomp.erfurt.thur.de> wrote in message
> > news:slrnb301sv.4ms.adi@drcomp.erfurt.thur.de...
> > > Frank Piron <frank.piron@konad.de> wrote:
> > > > Unfortunately GtkAda 1.3.12 ( Windows ) cannot handle
> > > > German - Umlaute.
> > >
> > > Yes, because Gtk 1.3.x does not support UTF8.
> Yes UTF8 seems popular.  Many Japanese web sites use shift-jis(utf-8).
> What I find surprising is that I still have to tell my web browser which
> encoding I should use for a certain web page. i.e. either french/english
> or japanese(shift, euc, iso...).  I thought that was all taken care of a
> long-time ago.
> 
> > >
> > > You'll need to switch to GTK 2.2 instead, but as far as I know there
> > > is no working windows-port, yet.
> >
> If you find it acceptable using win32/IME and X11 directly side-by-side
> with GTK
> you might want to consider looking at Yudit sources for inspiration.
> Yudit seems to support German Umlaute and runs on windows.
> http://www.yudit.org/download/binary/
> 
> For programmer editors IMHO emacs/MULE is hard to beat however when
> dealing with non-english american characters,
> I find important that whatever gui programmer/text editor used should
> clearly indicated status of the following:
> -what file format is my source code saved in(utf-8, as opposed to utf-7
> or iso-8859-1 etc...)
> -what keyboard input mode am I typing in
> -what key encoding is the file being displayed in
> Yudit IMHO provides that.
> It comforts me to know that I have one editor I do mostly everything
> in(EMACS) but sometimes I just want to double-check that I saved my
> emacs stuff in the right format(MULE stuff).  Yudit provides this for
> me.  In Emacs I tend to forget what display mode, what key-input, what
> file-format I'm in and IMHO they are not clearly indicated.
> 
> From what I understand, not only does yudit support japanese and
> hungarian but the hungarian mode supports German characters.  The
> following taken from the Yudit docs:
> "
> Hungarian
>   It maps Hungarian and German characters. The  accented characters
>   can be input with the  English character followed by the accent.
>     Examples:
>       a' becomes á , o: becomes ö ,  o" becomes Å?
>       SS produces the German ÃY , Ss  gives the paragraph sign §.
> "
> 
> Alternative 1)
> Yudit depends on libc, libX11/win32IME and the dynamic linker and not on
> gtk.  Maybe the tricks used in the Yudit Source Code could be used while
> co-existing with GTK < 2.2.  It does defeat the reason for using GTK in
> the first place though since you wanted to avoid using different apis on
> different platforms.  At least it is an alternative to see your stuff
> working with what you have i.e gtk < 2.2 instead of installing a new gtk
> along with other dependencies it may have on both linux and windows.
> 
> Alternative 2)
> They said about X-Window, "build the software and the hardware will
> come".  Now I suggest build your software in linux/gtk2.2 and the
> windows gtk2.2 will come :)
> 
> Alternative 3)
> Ditch windows altogether and start using linux boxes everywhere.
> 
> Alternative 4)
> Ditch GTK and consider using commercial software.
> 
> Alternative 5)look for other alternatives
> 
> Notice how I am going to CYA myself and not suggest which alternative to
> go with.  That's up to you :)  Good luck :)
> 
> Cheers,
> David Marceau

Re: GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

[David Botton]

Speaking as an "application" developer, using GWindows, CLAW or other native
framework will always give you a superior product on Windows. I prefer to
always abstract the GUI and write a version of the GUI front end for each
platform in their native framework (GtkAda for Linux, GWindows for Windows,
Cocoa for MacOSX, etc.)

Of course if you are just "hacking" a front end that end users will not be
using, GtkAda works OK on windows.

Support for GWindows/GNATCOM and GtkAda are both available from ACT
(sales@gnat.com)

David Botton


> But now we are unsure, wether its mor attractive to
> choose GtkAda for the Gui-Components, because then the
> Client - Library will compile in Gnu-Linux-Environments too.
> Unfortunately GtkAda 1.3.12 ( Windows ) cannot handle
> German - Umlaute. Further i did play around with the
> "testgtk"-Application for windows and noticed that its
> not so stable and smooth as Gwindows is.

Re: GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

[Frank Piron]

So, what you suggest is a "rapid-like" approach ?

Thanks for your comments, Frank Piron

David Botton schrieb:
> 
> Speaking as an "application" developer, using GWindows, CLAW or other native
> framework will always give you a superior product on Windows. I prefer to
> always abstract the GUI and write a version of the GUI front end for each
> platform in their native framework (GtkAda for Linux, GWindows for Windows,
> Cocoa for MacOSX, etc.)
> 
> Of course if you are just "hacking" a front end that end users will not be
> using, GtkAda works OK on windows.
> 
> Support for GWindows/GNATCOM and GtkAda are both available from ACT
> (sales@gnat.com)
> 
> David Botton
> 
> > But now we are unsure, wether its mor attractive to
> > choose GtkAda for the Gui-Components, because then the
> > Client - Library will compile in Gnu-Linux-Environments too.
> > Unfortunately GtkAda 1.3.12 ( Windows ) cannot handle
> > German - Umlaute. Further i did play around with the
> > "testgtk"-Application for windows and noticed that its
> > not so stable and smooth as Gwindows is.

Re: GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?

[David Botton]

Martin's scheme is some what the opposite of what I was trying to say.

What I am saying is design your application in a client server like fashion
with the GUI accessing your application through clear interfaces. Writing a
different GUI client for each platform you wish to support.

No reason though you could not take advantage of Martin's scheme to increase
productivity accross platforms by using it as the basis for the GUI  or
simple form like projects, but I would engourage heavy use of grabbing the
native API handles  and doing heavy platform specific customization, etc.

The fact that the Rapid framework is so limitted is its biggest plus. You
can not be all things to all people on all platforms.

There is some preliminary work on a GWindows implementation for Rapid (I
believe it is included with the distribution). I saddly keep getting pulled
away from GNATCOM/GWindows and Ada in general and was not able to give
Martin what he needed to complete it. I'll try and see if I can steel some
time to apply myself to that.

David Botton

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Piron" <frank.piron@konad.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
To: <comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 3:27 AM
Subject: Re: GtkAda for professional GUI-Application ?


> So, what you suggest is a "rapid-like" approach ?
>
> Thanks for your comments, Frank Piron
>
> David Botton schrieb:
> >
> > Speaking as an "application" developer, using GWindows, CLAW or other
native
> > framework will always give you a superior product on Windows. I prefer
to
> > always abstract the GUI and write a version of the GUI front end for
each
> > platform in their native framework (GtkAda for Linux, GWindows for
Windows,
> > Cocoa for MacOSX, etc.)
> >
> > Of course if you are just "hacking" a front end that end users will not
be
> > using, GtkAda works OK on windows.
> >
> > Support for GWindows/GNATCOM and GtkAda are both available from ACT
> > (sales@gnat.com)
> >
> > David Botton
> >
> > > But now we are unsure, wether its mor attractive to
> > > choose GtkAda for the Gui-Components, because then the
> > > Client - Library will compile in Gnu-Linux-Environments too.
> > > Unfortunately GtkAda 1.3.12 ( Windows ) cannot handle
> > > German - Umlaute. Further i did play around with the
> > > "testgtk"-Application for windows and noticed that its
> > > not so stable and smooth as Gwindows is.
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> comp.lang.ada mailing list
> comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
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