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Subject: Re: OS indepent GUIs

Author: David Blackman

Date: 03:38:56 12/24/00

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On December 24, 2000 at 03:09:17, James Robertson wrote:

>I am thinking of writing some accessory programs to help my work on Insomniac. I
>would like to write nice user interfaces, but am afraid that if I pick something
>like MFC I'll be stuck with nonportable code usable only in Windows. What
>libraries or programming techniques do you guys recommend for writing GUIs that
>are OS independent?
>
>Thanks!
>James

Tcl / Tk
Anything else / Tk

Qt

It's not normal to use Tk directly from C, although it can be done. But if you
bring in Tcl, that is quite useful for little scripts that don't need much
speed, and you don't really want to do in C. These scripts can call functions in
your C code. Tcl then gives you Tk for the GUI as well.

You can also use Tk through Perl, Python, or Scheme and probably other
languages. Much nicer scripting languages than Tcl, but probably harder to
integrate into your chess program than Tcl. (Certainly integrating perl is a bit
messy).

Qt has an weird system where you write in their modified version of C++. You can
certainly link this to the C or C++ of your chess program, so it should be ok.

Please make your Gui system "compatible" with X-board. You can make a better
user interface, if you like, or add more features, but please make it compatible
for stuff like plugging in existing X-board engines, playing games over a net,
between X-board and  you GUI etc.

X-board is the only standard for this kind of thing, and the computer chess
community needs more people to support the standard.



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