Re: GnatBench (from GPL edition)

[John McCabe <john@nospam.assen.demon.co.uk>]

On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:24:47 +0200, "Dmitry A. Kazakov"
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:

>On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:32:50 +0000, John McCabe wrote:
>
>> GPS may be a showcase for GTKAda but, on Windows, I don't think it
>> does GTK+ any favours. Look at the screenshot at
>> 
>> https://libre.adacore.com/gps/img/gps_800x600.jpg
>> 
>> Does that, to you, match up with the phrase  "Same modern GUI
>> available on all platforms " you can find at
>> https://libre.adacore.com/gps/main.html? To me the answer is plainly
>> no - that's the sort of GUI you'd be unlucky to get on Windows 3.1!
>
>Hmm, I don't see that. Do you mean ugly window decoration elements and
>cheap icons?

Well yes, but I'm not sure about "cheap" icons. Many of the icons are
(I would say) better than what you would expect from MS tools, but
they just don't really fit - the whole GTK+ thing is still, to me, not
quite right on MS Windows.

>Because otherwise GPS just follows MS Visual Studio design.

The layout does follow the MS VS design, the look though is of a
rather old version of MS VS, perhaps version 2.0 or 4.0 from the
mid-90s.

>The decorations can be changed using a GTK+ RC file. I wonder why AdaCore
>didn't do that.

>But where AdaCore took time and didn't copy from MS, GPS looks pretty good.
>For example, graphical indication of error locations left of the editor
>window is a great idea.

Do you mean the bit where the space is used to provide a
representation of the whole file, a rectangle moves up and down to
show which part of the file you're currently viewing, and red blocks
show where the error is?

That's interesting, but have you seen how the errors and warnings are
shown in Eclipse!

>IMO the problems with GPS lie elsewhere. I mean poor design of GTK+ and
>GDB.

I'm sure GPS is a perfectly capable tool and is better than nothing
(the whole concept of an IDE that can be used to manage your projects
is quite an advancement from what went before). I don't have any real
gripes with functionality, just form. It seems like AdaCore have put a
fair amount of effort into something that is ever so slightly
pointless!