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

[Norman Worth <nworth@comcastNOSPAM.net>]

On 8/10/2015 4:24 AM, Trish Cayetano wrote:
> Hi,
>
> 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.
>
> Please advise what shall I use to build the GUI...
>
> Thank you very much.
>
This is very much a matter of personal choice.  Despite its need to 
interpret XML, the Glade produced code is reasonably efficient.  But I 
have had some real problems with Glade, probably because I don't really 
know how to use it.  (Documentation is horribly scant.)  The Linux 
version seems to work as far as I can understand it, but the Windows 
version is not so easy to work with for some reason.  Coding directly 
using the GTK+ library is reasonably easy, but there are important 
differences from the C version, and the documentation is difficult.  You 
also will have a challenge with program architecture for any non-trivial 
GTK application.  The examples in the GTKAda download package are 
excellent at showing you how, but it takes a while to understand them.

Somebody mentioned using Tcl/Tk for the GUI.  A decent binding does 
exist.  I was at the conference where it was introduced several years 
ago.  The results are nice, and Tk is a nice interface to work with, but 
the code for the Ada/Tk combination is pretty ugly.