David Wehite wrote:
In his article "The Design of C++0x", published in C/C++ Users Journal, May 2005, the author of C++ Bjarne Stroustrup wrote, "The most commonly requested new feature for C++ is a standard GUI".
And the most debated as to how it would work ;)
I am new to Boost and will appreciate if some folks here would give me a summary of Boost organization's standing on such a standard GUI library. If and how was it addressed and pointers to work on the subject if such has been done.
I have, as well as many others, have made attempts into this brave new world ;). I suggest getting the framework right first to allow the support for the GUI/Graphics libraries to be build on top of them. (1) Platform -- detection for what GUI library is being used; native (GTK?, PalmOS API, Win32 API, etc.), native extension (ATL/WTL, MFC, GDK+, etc.) or cross-platform (wxWidgets, Qt, etc.) and the platform being used for that cross-platform GUI. This could be an extension to Boost.Config with platform/win32.hpp, platform/wxwidgets.hpp, etc. (2) String Library -- helpers to interact with native string types (e.g. wxString and ATL::CString) and C++ strings std::[w]string; native version of std::[w]string for platforms that use wide character strings; conversion routines and other helpers. (3) Colour Library -- there is a discussion of a colour library elsewhere on this list. This is one step to a standard GUI library, but must implicitly (by default?) support the platform being targetted. (4) Coordinates Library -- holding coordinate primitives: point (with its alias size) and rect are a minimum here; matrix and other transforms? what about interactions with other Boost libraries? 2D/3D support (e.g. the Windows GDI verses DirectX)? mixing different compatible systems? I would like to do something like: boost::coord::point2d pos; ::GetCursorPos( pos.native()); // handle POINT <==> point2d conversions Advanced Libraries -- (5) Graphics -- Mixing different graphical systems (e.g. Win32 GDI, GDI+ and DirectDraw/Direct3D).
I just want to clarify, that when I say "standard", I mean that as long as my application source code adheres to that standard, if I take it and walk into any machine that has a C++ compiler (at least one that deserves that title), compilation would at least not fail for syntax reasons, w/o me changing a single character in the source (not even changing the case of a character), no matter how complex and/or large that source is.
This should be one of the goals. It should also be possible to hook into the native code (GTK, wxWidgets, WTL, Win32, PalmOS API, etc.) when/if you want to. - Reece