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digitalmars.D - favorite GUI lib for D

reply Bedros Hanounik <2bedros NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
what's the favorite GUI lib for D? I mean something that's still actively
developed. I found few messages in the archive about D GUI libs, but it seems
that those lib are obsolete.

another question, how much work needed to create D bindings for QT 4.2. (
assuming 32bit)

Thanks
Sep 15 2007
next sibling parent reply Bill Baxter <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> writes:
Bedros Hanounik wrote:

 what's the favorite GUI lib for D? I mean something that's still actively
developed. I found few messages in the archive about D GUI libs, but it seems
that those lib are obsolete.


OpenGL.  :-)

But wxD is coming along.
and DFL seems to have a following.

I don't know of any others that are actively being worked on.


 another question, how much work needed to create D bindings for QT 4.2. (
assuming 32bit)


Truckloads.  The best bet would probably be to look at what other 
bindings are out there and see if anyone is doing it in a way that would 
work for D too.  For instance SWIG wrappers won't help D.  But an 
approach that involves creating an actual C API to wrap the library 
will.  For instance with wxD, the C-bindings to wxWidgets are shared by 



Found this: http://cougarpc.net/qyoto/
but I couldn't find any info about how they gen the bindings just that 
"it's automatic".

--bb
Sep 15 2007
parent Thomas Brix Larsen <brix brix-verden.dk> writes:
Bill Baxter wrote:


 Bedros Hanounik wrote:

 another question, how much work needed to create D bindings for QT 4.2. (
 assuming 32bit)


 
 Truckloads.  The best bet would probably be to look at what other
 bindings are out there and see if anyone is doing it in a way that would
 work for D too.  For instance SWIG wrappers won't help D.  But an
 approach that involves creating an actual C API to wrap the library
 will.  For instance with wxD, the C-bindings to wxWidgets are shared by

 

 Found this: http://cougarpc.net/qyoto/
 but I couldn't find any info about how they gen the bindings just that
 "it's automatic".


They seem to be using SMOKE:
http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Languages/QtSharp

An easier approach could be wrapping pyqt using pyd, but I'm not sure of how
or whether this would work.

- Brix
Sep 16 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent reply =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
Bedros Hanounik wrote:

 what's the favorite GUI lib for D? I mean something that's still actively
developed.


What are your requirements ? Platforms ? Cost ? Source ?

The list at http://www.dprogramming.com/dlists/gui.php says:
1. DFL
2. DWT
3. wxD


 I found few messages in the archive about D GUI libs, but it seems that those
lib are obsolete.


There's a list at http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?GuiLibraries


 another question, how much work needed to create D bindings for QT 4.2. (
assuming 32bit)


Probably: "lots" :-) There's a slight licensing problem, as well ?

But I don't think it works with the auto-generators, so one would


Should be some updated bindings now, like Qyoto/Kimono or Qt/Jambi ?

--anders
Sep 16 2007
next sibling parent reply Bill Baxter <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> writes:
Anders F Björklund wrote:

 Bedros Hanounik wrote:

 what's the favorite GUI lib for D? I mean something that's still 
 actively developed.


 
 What are your requirements ? Platforms ? Cost ? Source ?
 
 The list at http://www.dprogramming.com/dlists/gui.php says:
 1. DFL
 2. DWT
 3. wxD
 


I've yet to see any GUI app written in D that was more than a toy.
Has anyone written a serious GUI app in D?

--bb
Sep 16 2007
next sibling parent reply Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:
Bill Baxter wrote:

 I've yet to see any GUI app written in D that was more than a toy.


Entice designer?

http://www.dprogramming.com/entice.php
Sep 16 2007
parent reply Bill Baxter <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> writes:
Lutger wrote:

 Bill Baxter wrote:

 I've yet to see any GUI app written in D that was more than a toy.


 
 Entice designer?
 
 http://www.dprogramming.com/entice.php


Is that actually written in D?

The gap between the DFL examples and Entice is so huge that it always 
made me think Entice must have been written using something else.

--bb
Sep 16 2007
parent Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:
Bill Baxter wrote:

 Lutger wrote:

 Bill Baxter wrote:

 I've yet to see any GUI app written in D that was more than a toy.


 Entice designer?

 http://www.dprogramming.com/entice.php


 
 Is that actually written in D?
 
 The gap between the DFL examples and Entice is so huge that it always 
 made me think Entice must have been written using something else.
 
 --bb


Yes: http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3131
Sep 16 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent Downs <default_357-line yahoo.de> writes:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Bill Baxter wrote:

 Anders F Björklund wrote:

 Bedros Hanounik wrote:

 what's the favorite GUI lib for D? I mean something that's still
 actively developed.


 What are your requirements ? Platforms ? Cost ? Source ?

 The list at http://www.dprogramming.com/dlists/gui.php says:
 1. DFL
 2. DWT
 3. wxD


 
 I've yet to see any GUI app written in D that was more than a toy.
 Has anyone written a serious GUI app in D?
 
 --bb


Would you count YAWR (http://yawr.sf.net/ ) as a toy?
Screen: http://sourceforge.net/dbimage.php?id=140687
I'm not sure how to categorize it.
 --downs (who wrote it)
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Sep 16 2007
prev sibling parent reply "Stewart Gordon" <smjg_1998 yahoo.com> writes:
"Bill Baxter" <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> wrote in message 
news:fcj1vi$17pt$1 digitalmars.com...
<snip>

 I've yet to see any GUI app written in D that was more than a toy.
 Has anyone written a serious GUI app in D?


If you're distinguishing between small, experimental programs and 
fully-fledged apps worthy of being released to the masses, then yes. 
Empire, for instance, although this wasn't written with a GUI library.

If you're distinguishing between games/other 'fun' apps and programs with a 
real practical purpose, then yes again.  MDI Edit, one of the example apps 
bundled with SDWF, is a simple text editor application.

If you want something that fits both definitions of a serious application, 
then Entice Designer may be the best example so far.  But that's still of 
interest primarily to D programmers, and especially users of one GUI 
library.  So I suppose the next stage is to bring out something that meets 
the criteria for "serious" and will have more widespread appeal.

Stewart.
Sep 18 2007
parent Bill Baxter <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> writes:
Stewart Gordon wrote:

 "Bill Baxter" <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> wrote in message 
 news:fcj1vi$17pt$1 digitalmars.com...
 <snip>

 I've yet to see any GUI app written in D that was more than a toy.
 Has anyone written a serious GUI app in D?


 
 If you're distinguishing between small, experimental programs and 
 fully-fledged apps worthy of being released to the masses, then yes. 
 Empire, for instance, although this wasn't written with a GUI library.
 
 If you're distinguishing between games/other 'fun' apps and programs 
 with a real practical purpose, then yes again.  MDI Edit, one of the 
 example apps bundled with SDWF, is a simple text editor application.
 
 If you want something that fits both definitions of a serious 
 application, then Entice Designer may be the best example so far.  But 
 that's still of interest primarily to D programmers, and especially 
 users of one GUI library.  So I suppose the next stage is to bring out 
 something that meets the criteria for "serious" and will have more 
 widespread appeal.


Entice fits the bill.  The MDI Edit example from SDWF may too.  I 
haven't seen it.  By 'toy' I just meant more than a page or two of code. 
  Now that I think about it wxWidgets has some fairly complex demos too. 
  If Anders has ported those then they'd fit the bill too.

It would be nice if there were some high-visibilty open source end-user 
app written in D.  Like maybe a bittorrent client or something.

--bb
Sep 18 2007
prev sibling parent reply "Stewart Gordon" <smjg_1998 yahoo.com> writes:
"Anders F Björklund" <afb algonet.se> wrote in message 
news:fcj15t$16sf$1 digitalmars.com...
<snip>

 The list at http://www.dprogramming.com/dlists/gui.php says:
 1. DFL
 2. DWT
 3. wxD


<snip>

"Lists sorted by search engine hits, or popularity."

What is this meant to mean?

Stewart.
Sep 18 2007
parent "Chris Miller" <chris dprogramming.com> writes:
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:01:13 -0400, Stewart Gordon <smjg_1998 yahoo.com>  
wrote:


 "Anders F Björklund" <afb algonet.se> wrote in message  
 news:fcj15t$16sf$1 digitalmars.com...
 <snip>

 The list at http://www.dprogramming.com/dlists/gui.php says:
 1. DFL
 2. DWT
 3. wxD


 <snip>

 "Lists sorted by search engine hits, or popularity."

 What is this meant to mean?

 Stewart.


http://www.dprogramming.com/dlists/ says "lists are sorted by counting  
hits on Google and are ranked based on usage in the D programming language  
community. The lists are not 100% accurate, but hopefully they can be  
reasonably accurate." - similar to the TIOBE language index.
Sep 22 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent TomD <t_demmer_no_spam_ web.de> writes:
Bill Baxter Wrote:

[...]

 I've yet to see any GUI app written in D that was more than a toy.
 Has anyone written a serious GUI app in D?


I am currently porting a software that queries industrial Analog/digital 
IO modules and displays/logs the responses. It basically just needs a list
of IP-adresses and then queries each station for its modules. Every station
gets a tab of a notebook with its modules on. 
The original was written in Delphi, but I need cross platform. 
FreePascal/Lazarus don't fly, dmd&wxD do. Porting the non-visual objects 
was my first exercise in D, now the visuals are a bit more complicated, 
because the Delphi stuff had absolute coordinates and such, lacking sizers. 

But in total it is usable, if you ignore the file sizes of the executables.

The Delphi sources have some 2k lines and include TCP/IP communication
and threads. Up to you if you call that a toy project.

Ciao
Tom
Sep 16 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent Bedros Hanounik <2bedros NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
Thanks for your all help.

I don't think DFL works for me, since it does not support Linux (for now); but
it looks promising.

I've used wxpython before, so if wxD is stable enough, it could be my best
choice.

I'm liking QT4 library, but I never used it heavily, I just played with it. 
it looks like it's possible to take hints from pyd and pyqt and create DQT
library (as Thomas Brix Larsen mentioned in his reply).

thanks for your all help, I'll start playing with wxD since it seems to be the
easiest path

Bedros Hanounik Wrote:


 what's the favorite GUI lib for D? I mean something that's still actively
developed. I found few messages in the archive about D GUI libs, but it seems
that those lib are obsolete.
 
 another question, how much work needed to create D bindings for QT 4.2. (
assuming 32bit)
 
 Thanks
Sep 19 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent Guillaume B. <guillaume.b.spam spam.spam> writes:
Bedros Hanounik Wrote:


 Thanks for your all help.
 
 I don't think DFL works for me, since it does not support Linux (for now); but
it looks promising.
 


 For your information, both dmd (for windows) and DFL works flawlessly under
Linux with Wine: I can develop, compile and run DFL applications (although
nothing worth mentioning)... It would be even better if DFL supported Linux but
it's nice for now since DFL works well! :-)

 Guillaume
Sep 19 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> writes:
Chris Miller Wrote:


 On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:01:13 -0400, Stewart Gordon <smjg_1998 yahoo.com>  
 wrote:
 

 "Anders F Björklund" <afb algonet.se> wrote in message  
 news:fcj15t$16sf$1 digitalmars.com...
 <snip>

 The list at http://www.dprogramming.com/dlists/gui.php says:
 1. DFL
 2. DWT
 3. wxD


 <snip>

 "Lists sorted by search engine hits, or popularity."

 What is this meant to mean?

 Stewart.


 
 http://www.dprogramming.com/dlists/ says "lists are sorted by counting  
 hits on Google and are ranked based on usage in the D programming language  
 community. The lists are not 100% accurate, but hopefully they can be  
 reasonably accurate." - similar to the TIOBE language index.


Those lists make me very sad. According to them, Descent is a less popular IDE
than every _dead_ Eclipse-based IDE ;-{.
Sep 23 2007
parent reply "Chris Miller" <chris dprogramming.com> writes:
On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 18:05:45 -0400, Robert Fraser  
<fraserofthenight gmail.com> wrote:


 Those lists make me very sad. According to them, Descent is a less  
 popular IDE than every _dead_ Eclipse-based IDE ;-{.


You have a point, I was sure the Editors lists was the least reliable. I  
just updated it:
    http://www.dprogramming.com/dlists/editor.php

Descent moved up, I noticed Poseidon had a lot of false hits so I fixed  
that, and I noticed some spammers/wordlists in the results and excluded  
them.

Thanks for your feedback. Feel free to point out more obvious mistakes.

- Chris
Sep 23 2007
parent reply Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> writes:
Chris Miller wrote:

 On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 18:05:45 -0400, Robert Fraser 
 <fraserofthenight gmail.com> wrote:
 

 Those lists make me very sad. According to them, Descent is a less 
 popular IDE than every _dead_ Eclipse-based IDE ;-{.


 
 You have a point, I was sure the Editors lists was the least reliable. I 
 just updated it:
    http://www.dprogramming.com/dlists/editor.php
 
 Descent moved up, I noticed Poseidon had a lot of false hits so I fixed 
 that, and I noticed some spammers/wordlists in the results and excluded 
 them.
 
 Thanks for your feedback. Feel free to point out more obvious mistakes.
 
 - Chris



To create a popular IDE, just name it Sex :P
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=Sex+%28editor+OR+IDE%29

Seriously that list is way off. DDT is still quite ahead of Descent, 
among other irrealities. You'de have to create custom queries for each 
IDE (to remove other meanings, like TIOBE does), to have results even 
near interesting. Something like:
DDT (IDE or editor) -pesticide -Insecticide

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D
Sep 24 2007
parent "Chris Miller" <chris dprogramming.com> writes:
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 06:46:03 -0400, Bruno Medeiros  
<brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> wrote:


 Seriously that list is way off. DDT is still quite ahead of Descent,  
 among other irrealities. You'de have to create custom queries for each  
 IDE (to remove other meanings, like TIOBE does), to have results even  
 near interesting. Something like:
 DDT (IDE or editor) -pesticide -Insecticide


That's not the search terms. If you include "d programming langauge" and  
weed out some spam and some other false hits, DDT is mentioned quite a lot  
(true positive hits).

I'll also note that a lot of things are tied, I should probably group them  
with the same number.
Sep 24 2007
prev sibling parent Kevin Watters <kevinwatters gmail.com> writes:
Bedros Hanounik wrote:

 what's the favorite GUI lib for D? I mean something that's still actively
developed. I found few messages in the archive about D GUI libs, but it seems
that those lib are obsolete.


When it comes to GUI toolkits I never understand why you would ever 
paint your own controls.  Even toolkits like QT which the style APIs of 
the OS suffer because of it--on Vista, for example, you don't get the 
glowing effect buttons have on a mouseover.

I know that sounds trivial, but the point goes further when you consider 
all the intricacies of event handling that users are used to on their 
own platform.

For these reasons, MinWin was by far my favorite:

http://www.dsource.org/projects/minwin

It seemed to use the most D-like approach, with templates and compile 
time logic to make the smallest and most native code possible.

The idea was great, but I remember trying it when it was pretty early 
and it was definitely still very rough around the edges and missing big 
features you'd probably want.
Sep 26 2007