From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,e376d32d2036a816 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Emmanuel Briot Subject: Re: More GUI Date: 2000/05/31 Message-ID: <8h2j3v$r2p$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 629362960 References: X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x58.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 195.25.32.163 Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. X-Article-Creation-Date: Wed May 31 08:39:28 2000 GMT X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDbriot_emmanuel_franc Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (X11; I; HP-UX B.10.20 9000/782; Nav) Date: 2000-05-31T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: "William J. Thomas" wrote: > The problem is the metaphor is extremely fast and easy to use but complex > and difficult to code. You might be happy to know that even VB falls short > and I find myself dipping into the Win32API more and more. You maybe happy > to know that most of the code is in Ada95, only the visuals are in VB. Of course, this means that your code is less portable than it would be otherwise. Most GUI toolkits are now designed to be as portable as possible (at least from the user's point of view). To speak of what I know, several people have been able to simply move their code from a Linux machine to a Windows machine and recompile, et voila! (I think the reverse has also been done). > God bless Robert Dewar and the folks at ACT, they are responsible for a > growing Ada culture that I thought I would never see. What we need now is a > couple of dedicated people who are determined to produce a world class Ada > GUI builder, one better than the VC++ or VB environments. One of the best I > have seen so far is the GtkAda GUI builder. If you could work the Windows > bugs out, that would be a good starting place. The thing with that GUI builder is that is is programmed in C (:-(), and is used for several languages, from C to C++, Ada, Perl, ... Of course, although the development might be somewhat slower than what people would dream of, this means that the programming efforts can be combined to hammer the bugs out (yes, there are still quite a few left, especially on Windows, but things are improving steadily). > Some suggestions for the Ada GUI builders:: A box, container, or even a > window widget that allows for the fixed placement of all others components > inside it, but once the container is manually resized at runtime it allows > for the automatic resizing of all of the fixed placed and sized components > inside of it. Note that the first step (fixed placement) is already doable with gtk+/GtkAda, the container is called suprisingly enough GtkFixed ! No automatic resizing is provided however. I don't remember seeing an interface where the size of the contents changes dynamically when the size of the window is changed. Is this something recommended by Microsoft GUI coding standards ? > Allow for the varied set of coordinate modes that VB allows for, including > twips. Could you explain a little bit more what these are, for the non VB specialists ? > A true Desktop Publishing type of multi-line text box, one that comes with > all of the trimmings found in something like an 'Interleaf paragraph object > '. The next major version of gtk+ (and of course of GtkAda) will have a much improved text widget, very close to what is currently provided by Tcl/Tk (ie the text can have many properties, you can add pixmaps,...) It will also support internationalization much better than is currently the case. > Continue to refine the Ada interfaces to allow for the true object oriented > development of new tools or widgets. The easier it is to develop new and > more powerful tools in an 'extend and combine manner' the more popular the > whole application will become. I think most of the Ada GUI toolkits are trying to provide this kind of abstraction, even when the underlying toolkit is not object-oriented. This makes it for instance easier to use gtk+ from Ada95 than from C (*less* type casting !) > Also stretch things a little farther into the Windows realm and find some > way of incorporating OCX components into the application, find a way to do > this (without crashing minutes after the inclusion of an OCX component) and > you are on your way. That will do for a start. This probably won't be done as far as GtkAda is concerned. Our main goal is to be portable accross plateforms, at least everywhere ACT and ACT-Europe have ported GNAT. Having too many OS-specific features makes things harder to port... Emmanuel GtkAda team Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.