Author: Vincent Diepeveen
Date: 15:17:35 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? Actually i wanted to setup DIEP's GUI like that initially, so system independant. So i checked out cross compilable libs. However except if you are going to be only user of your both interfaces, it appeared after wasting about 6 months to this approach that all kind of libs are commercially not interesting. The biggest problem is however that the few portable libraries that are there are basically linux oriented and only 'happen' to run under windows, whereas i always run under windows and want it to be rockstable under windows and real good under windows and that it also compiles for linux is just a happy extra. Other systems as linux or windows i didn't even care for, bad luck dudes. Real soon i ran into wxwindows. It is having too much bugs, not enough examples especially, and it hardly gets tested under msvc compiler otherwise it would be quite interesting. Now before some people go protest: OF COURSE we want to compile under msvc for a pretty simple reason. Not in the last place for its debugger. Secondly interesting looks Qt library, but it's hell commercial and c++, now that last doesn't scare me (note wxwindows also c++), but it costs quite a few dollars to run under windows. Now that means that for making interface you pay big dollars in order that it also runs under linux, for sure not a smart investment as you never going to sell enough linux version to pay back for the library costs, not to mention the extra effort. All kind of gtk or tcl/tk libraries are so incredible pathetic, because no person in the world that's not a freak will ever be able to install them. Good examples are the SCID program that cross works both under windows and linux. I heart cool stories about it, so i tried to get the windows version to work, but i've *never* gotten it to work for windows even despite that i downloaded some software and even though i followed description i had to follow as put to the program to install needed libraries for it. In short all those kind of ports just only work if you are going to be the only user and perhaps a few bigger freaks as me who know how to install all kind of contradicting libraries. A big worry in linux 'help' files how to implement functions is that usual there are not many examples how to do it. Only a 'theoretic' description how function works. That's not speeding up your implementation, whereas example would speed you up a lot faster! So in the end i started programming API-C. Zillions of examples directly cut'n paste-able. You control yourself all message pumps/loops. Some people do not like that i guess, and it's hell hard to learn (for me it was at least at least wasting another 6 months of time to make my own interface) but in the end i like it most. In the end it is not so low level at all as windows i also design in visual editors of course. If you don't like that then use one of the cool visual tools like: visual basic delphi borland c++ builder I would use MFC really as last in the row, though i know some people who fulltime program for it are quite happy with it as it gives some functionality which in API-C is quite a bit harder to make, it's especially cool to quickly hack things together. Most positive reactions are about borland c++ builder so far. On the other hand if you keep on using delphi you might get lucky and see one day a port of it to linux. I wouldn't already buy stocks/shares already betting on a successful product working for linux yet. What i personal do is keep my engine ansi-c and it is xboard/winboard compatible in the meantime the windows interface simply communicates fast with the engine and the interface is windows-only. And unless someone wants to spend a fortune with at least 4 zero's in US dollars i sure won't make an interface for x-windows. I made some x-windows things some years ago and if i have a nightmare then x-windows programming is part of it. Greetings, Vincent >Thanks! >James
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