From: DeMarcus on
>
> There are advantages and disadvantages to promoting a single GUI
> library. The most obvious advantage is that everyone programs to just
> one GUI standard.
>

As I see it there are at least two other advantages that are even more
important.

1. A standard GUI library would not be proprietary software. Just the
fact that companies own such a major thing as the GUI library makes my
spine cold.

2. If a standard were written today with C++ (read: not C) in mind, with
help from leading experts, we would have a clean, intuitive library free
from macros and weird logic.

I would be so happy if guys like A. Alexandrescu and D. Abrahams
together with some front line GUI programmers put together a GUI library
anno 2010. They don't have to make all implementations for all
platforms, just the interface.

If I know that a GUI library interface is open source and created and
developed by a proper organization like Boost.org or equivalent, I would
happily pay a company for the best implementation of that standard.


/Daniel



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From: Branimir Maksimovic on
Edward Diener wrote:
In general I have
> found that no single GUI library in any language is really excellent
> covering even the major diffwerent GUIs which exist in the popular OSs
> for which one might want to write a cross-platform application.
>

I think that cross platform programming is getting slowly thing of the
past with all this hype about virtual machines and cloud computing.

For example, I currently play civ4 on linux, and works better than
on windows. Code is not even recompiled...

So with emulators and virtual machines getting better, we wouldn't need
to worry about portability... even code with undefined behavior works,
even on different cpus, not even recompiled...

And running c++ binary code in virtual machine is faster than
running java byte code in virtual machine in virtual machine... ;)

Greets

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From: Öö Tiib on
On Jan 22, 4:03 am, Alex Strickland <s...(a)mweb.co.za> wrote:
> So there is tons of code using AnsiString which seems quite different to
> std::string. If I upgrade to the latest version there will be tons of code which
> should probably change to UnicodeString which seems similarly unrelated to
> std::wstring.
>
> I thought I'd look at qt, and what do I find, QString! An even quicker look at
> U++ and I find String.
>
> What is the problem with std::string (or std::wstring) and GUI libraries?

I usually use strictly standard conforming code and STL in my
application layer. Odd strings and other widgets in GUI layer i
dislike and so they are actually helpful since they let me to feel
where i am. Widgetisms indicate that i am in GUI layer, standard
strings indicate that i am in application layer. When need to convert
arises then i am between the two and must think where it belongs what
i am attempting to write. It makes easier to switch to other GUI or to
go totally command line thanks to it. Otherwise there is danger of
mixing application logic into GUI and be left with nothing reusable.


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From: Edward Diener on
Robert Hairgrove wrote:
> Edward Diener wrote:
>> In general I have found that no single GUI library in any language is
>> really excellent covering even the major diffwerent GUIs which exist
>> in the popular OSs for which one might want to write a cross-platform
>> application.
>>
>
> When was the last time you looked at the Qt libs?

Unfortunately Qt's pricing/licensing destroys its ability to be taken
seriously. What C++ definitely does not need is people telling you how
you can use their library.

Other than that Qt has done a good job but it is still far from robustly
cross-platform IMO nor does it use the latest advances in C++.

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From: Eric J. Holtman on
Edward Diener <eldiener_no_spam_here(a)tropicsoft.com> wrote in news:4b5ba923
$0$2512$ed362ca5(a)nr5-q3a.newsreader.com:

> Unfortunately Qt's pricing/licensing destroys its ability to be taken
> seriously. What C++ definitely does not need is people telling you how
> you can use their library.
>

I thought it was open source now.

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