Re: Xlib Binding or Re-implementation?

[Preben Randhol <randhol+valid_for_reply_from_news@pvv.org>]

On 2004-03-17, Ben Atkin <bma3@dana.ucc.nau.edu> wrote:
>> X11 binding:
>> 
>>    http://www.adapower.com/lab/adax.html
>
> I'll check it out, thanks.
>
>> What is it that you don't like about Gtk?
>
> It isn't Gtk in particular. It's that GUI libraries for 'nix, other
> than Qt, don't encourage good GUI design principles. In fact, if you
> compile their examples on GTK's website, you will get a broken GUI. By
> broken I mean that pressing Esc doesn't close a dialog box, and
> pressing Enter in a single-line text field doesn't cause the default
> button to be pressed and the appropriate action to be taken.

It would be very nice if you report the problems. At least I would be
interested.

> Plus, GTK programs are full of other types of bugs, many of which
> could be prevented by using something other than type-unsafe macros,
> leading to spaghetti code.

And GtkAda programs? Don't look at GTK programs programmed in C. C
program will crash regardless of the GUI. Of course I would also like to
have all libraries written in Ada, the problem is that then everybody
else must use Ada. I don't see this happing. Of course I could only use
the Ada library, but to introduce a new GUI which does things
differently than the others makes things inconsistent.

Now this said. I would rather have Gwindow or Claw ported to work on
Linux and Mac OS, than a new library. I don't want to put you off what
you want to do, but it is a huge task.

> Part of me wants to jump on the GTK bandwagon, and help things
> progress toward a standard. But what I really want to progress toward
> is having well-designed GUI's.

That would be great.

-- 
Preben Randhol -------- http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/

()  "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"
/\                                   - Isaac Asimov