Re: GUI for Ada (GPS with GtkAda or GtkGlade GUI Builder)

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

On Mon, 10 Aug 2015 03:24:35 -0700 (PDT), Trish Cayetano wrote:

> I am done with the functionality of my Ada program (using GPS) and next is
> to make it pretty by having a GUI instead of a text based. 
 
Two major contenders are GTK and Qt.

GTK has the problem that the developer team does everything possible to
keep in backward incompatible and going on removing functionalities without
any replacement. Another problem is that GtkAda is kept well behind, being
released only once in a year. Binary distribution of GTK for Windows is
almost not maintained. Building it from sources under Windows practically
impossible so presently you have to keep it working form 3.8 and 3.10 which
(see above) is not trivial at best. The main advantage is that GtkAda is
AdaCore.

Qt has the problem of multiple Ada bindings of uncertain quality and
maintenance. I didn't use Qt so I cannot say anything regarding Qt itself.

To put things clear:

GPS is an IDE designed in GtkAda. It does not limit you to use any other
GUI framework or same version of GTK (GPS is 3.8.2, I believe) Actual GTK
for GtkAda is 3.8.3. Actual GTK is 3.10 or higher. The latest official
binary GTK for Windows is 3.6.something.

GLADE is a GUI builder for Gtk. There are different opinions on it, mine is
(I am doing a lot of stuff in GtkAda) never touch it if you want to design
something beyond simple input forms.

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