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From: dan on 15 Jun 2010 02:38
HI All,

I'm planning on writing some software and i'm trying to decide
on a suitable platform.

The software will be interactive and have a gui.

I would like something that has a good library so widgets
like buttons and windows are easy to produce. So something
like NeXTstep from the early 90s would be terrific.

But i also want something stable, so that after i write
this code i can leave it utterly untouched and revisit it
a decade from now and compile it without even modifying
a Makefile.

I'm aware of GNUstep, but i'm a little worried that as it tries
to track trends in Mac OS X it will be no more stable over
time than OS X is. (I mean, i have tons of code and nib
files from the old days which would be a huge task to update.)

On the other hand, X windows programming seems painful.

(And i also don't know if it is stable: can the xv sources
of say ca. 1995 compile today without change?)

Would wine be stable? (I don't think i have any plans to
do windows stuff, but is the win32 interface itself stable,
so that if wine tracks it it won't destabilize?)

I'm interested in any ideas, i just don't want to have to
keep recoding.

Thanks in advance for any info.

dan
From: Ben Finney on 15 Jun 2010 03:05
dan <dan.hitt(a)gmail.com> writes:

> I would like something that has a good library so widgets like buttons
> and windows are easy to produce. So something like NeXTstep from the
> early 90s would be terrific.
>
> But i also want something stable, so that after i write this code i
> can leave it utterly untouched and revisit it a decade from now and
> compile it without even modifying a Makefile.

I think your requirements are most amply met by Tk 8.5 or later.

Originally a widget set for Tcl, the Tk library has mature,
comprehensive bindings in Perl, Python, Ruby, and other languages. It is
cross-platform and highly stable, with a strong focus on backward
compatibility.

In version 8.5 and later, the “themed Tk” (“ttk”) improvement makes it
much simpler to do cross-platform native widgets that behave like the
rest of the user's desktop.

Many people dismiss Tk as looking archaic and ugly; this is largely
because programs that worked ten years ago *continue* to work as they
always did, which means they look the way they always did. Updating such
programs to look modern is very simple, but the status quo gives Tk its
undeserved reputation.

See the TkDocs website <URL:http://www.tkdocs.com/> for an overview,
tutorial in multiple programming languages, and reference, plus links to
the official Tk site and documentation.

--
\ “Free thought is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition |
`\ for democracy.” —Carl Sagan |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
From: Bill Waddington on 15 Jun 2010 09:29
On Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:38:42 -0700 (PDT), dan <dan.hitt(a)gmail.com>
wrote:

>HI All,
>
>I'm planning on writing some software and i'm trying to decide
>on a suitable platform.
>
>The software will be interactive and have a gui.

Hi Dan,

I asked a similar question back on 24 January, 2009, and got a
range of useful opinions. I was looking to write a GUI front-
end for C code, but ended up writing my Sudoku solver in pure
tcl/tk.

Have a serch for "simple GUI tools" in this newsgroup. You may
find the suggestions useful.

Bill
--
William D Waddington
william.waddington(a)beezmo.com
"Even bugs...are unexpected signposts on
the long road of creativity..." - Ken Burtch
From: dan on 15 Jun 2010 22:55
Thanks Bill and Ben for your replies about Tk.

Thanks also Bill for the suggestion to search for
"simple GUI tools" (although actually without the
quotes, in case somebody stumbles on this thread).

Your earlier question and the replies to it are
interesting and useful: Motif, XForms, etc, etc.

I'm a little surprised that nobody in the
earlier thread mentioned anything about NeXTstep,
OPENstep, or any of their successors (such as GNUstep)
--- it really makes programming the gui part a snap,
and it can integrate into your code as deeply as
you want.

However i'm here to receive advice not dispense
it, and having a 10-year old piece of Tk work
and look exactly like it did 10 years ago---so that
you can pick up with it right where you left it off---
sounds mighty appealing (hope it's not just greener
grass on the other side of the fence).

What i wonder about GTk is how stable it is over
a long period---is there any year 2000 GTk in use?
(The wikipedia article mentions plans to remove
"deprecated" API components, which sounds scary.
I wish my Buttons, Views, Windows, Panels, etc
were not removed from the NeXT step tree,
namespace pollution and collisions notwithstanding.)

If anybody else has any advice of any kind
i'm interested, and thanks again Bill and Ben
and all the posters from the "simple gui tools"
thread.

dan



>
> Have a serch for "simple GUI tools" in this newsgroup.  You may
> find the suggestions useful.
>
> Bill
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