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digitalmars.D - Getting started with GUI development using D and Gtkd.

reply "Steve Teale" <steve.teale britseyeview.com> writes:
I am sad to announce that this does not appear to have a great 
deal of appeal.

This may of course be because my little series of articles  - 
http://britseyeview.com/software/articles/gsgtkd101.html, et seq 
- was complete crap, but I suspect that this is not entirely the 
case.

I've done this sort of thing before. The vast majority of hits my 
site gets are on a 3-part sequence on 'Getting started with 
datatables' (that's jQuery based stuff on how to deal with HTML 
tables.) Those are very basic stuff.

There was an initial flurry of hits after my initial 
announcement, quite a few I suspect via this newsgroup. But since 
then, very little in the way of repeat visits.

I wonder if this is because the code examples in D are just not 
sufficiently comprehensible, even though they were done in a 
'better C' style. Also, of course, there's the 'what is D' factor.

It could also be a problem that I assumed the use of CodeView, 
attempting to give a route for a quick start.

Also I wonder these days if people are interested in writing 
non-web-based GUI programs at all. Are they a thing of the past?

Just thought I would report.

Steve
Dec 06 2013
next sibling parent "Steve Teale" <steve.teale britseyeview.com> writes:
 Just thought I would report.


And my! Such an active newsgroup - hits on the quoted page within 
minutes!
Dec 06 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Artem Tarasov <lomereiter gmail.com> writes:
My two cents.

1. Too long lines. Preferred length for readability is 60-80 characters per
line.
2. I have to scroll quite a while until I see some *code*. I lose interest
with every paragraph about tools setup. Some sentences are blatantly
redundant, like 'I installed DMD by double-clicking on the .deb file' - not
only this suggests that your audience has no idea what a .deb file is, but
it's not even directed to your reader. I mean, people are supposed to read
that part as an instruction, but instead they read about your experience.
And what could be worse than installation of the compiler being non-obvious?
3. Again, as a beginner, I want to see a script that I can paste into
terminal and which will install the necessary tools while I'm reading next
section. Instead of 'some' directory, use a concrete one.
4. Documentation. Two paragraphs instead of two *links* - both standard
library and GTKd have online documentation, why do you point readers to
local documentation in the Internet era?
5. Screenshots. Why can't I just see how you CodeBlocks setup looks like,
instead of reading the description in plain text?
6. Maybe - just maybe - CodeBlocks setup should go into a separate post.
After all, if your readers can type 'make' to compile GTKd, why can't they
type 'dmd'?
Dec 06 2013
next sibling parent "Steve Teale" <steve.teale britseyeview.com> writes:
On Friday, 6 December 2013 at 18:31:17 UTC, Artem Tarasov wrote:

 My two cents.

 library and GTKd have online documentation, why do you point 
 readers to
 local documentation in the Internet era?


I'll work on it if I get time. I do know it is far from perfect, 
but this stuff takes time, so a stream of consciousness approach 
works for me.

In particular answer to one of your points, I live in Africa, 
where Internet is expensive and slow. If I had to wait for the 
web to look up this stuff ...

Lots of potential D converts may have similar circumstances.
Dec 06 2013
prev sibling parent John J <john.joyus gmail.com> writes:
On 12/06/2013 01:31 PM, Artem Tarasov wrote:

 My two cents.

 5. Screenshots. Why can't I just see how you CodeBlocks setup looks
 like, instead of reading the description in plain text?


This point reminds me a WTF moment I had with one GUI kit a few months 
ago (don't remember its name anymore). That guy even made a youtube 
video about the gui kit.. but.. all he showed in the video was how to 
make a terminal app using his GUI library!! End of story.

I strongly request anyone who creates a GUI kit to please put together a 
demo app and then make that demo code and a screenshot of that demo app 
available on the website so that we can see it first without installing 
anything.
Dec 06 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent "MattCoder" <mattcoder hotmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 6 December 2013 at 17:46:05 UTC, Steve Teale wrote:

 I am sad to announce that this does not appear to have a great 
 deal of appeal.

 This may of course be because my little series of articles  - 
 http://britseyeview.com/software/articles/gsgtkd101.html, et 
 seq - was complete crap, but I suspect that this is not 
 entirely the case.
 ...


When you wrote these stuff? Because I was looking for something
like this sometime ago and google wasn't able to find.

Maybe you haven't had too many views because the example in C are
very adaptable.

PS: In course 103 the link to 104 is inactive.

Matheus.
Dec 06 2013
prev sibling next sibling parent "qznc" <qznc web.de> writes:
On Friday, 6 December 2013 at 17:46:05 UTC, Steve Teale wrote:

 This may of course be because my little series of articles  - 
 http://britseyeview.com/software/articles/gsgtkd101.html, et 
 seq - was complete crap, but I suspect that this is not 
 entirely the case.


Nice. I added a link in the tutorial: 
http://qznc.github.io/d-tut/gui.html
Dec 06 2013
prev sibling parent John J <john.joyus gmail.com> writes:
On 12/06/2013 12:46 PM, Steve Teale wrote:

 Also I wonder these days if people are interested in writing
 non-web-based GUI programs at all. Are they a thing of the past?


I am not sure about Linux, but there is a good demand/need for GUI 
programs on Windows and Mac.
Dec 06 2013