Back on the subject of a GUI library: I understand the motivation - that's where wxWindows arose. And I realise that nowadays a GUI library could be done in a much more modern C++ style. But my question is: is C++ the right language? I don't want this to descend into a religious war - C++ is my favourite language, but it isn't the best language for
I would say so ;) For instance, you can abstract away a lot of stuff (true binding of data to GUI controls): http://www.torjo.com/win32gui/save_dlg.html Also, I want to allow, in the future, to bind STL containers directly to GUI list controls. So, I would say a higher level language won't be of help here - because you would need to convert your data and send it back and forth. I remember the days when I used to do the UI in VB - it was quite a mixed feeling...
every task. Would a higher-level, more dynamic language be more suitable for GUI work? In a perfect world, I'd do all my back-end stuff in C++
sometimes, certainly
and all the front-end development in, say, Python. By doing all the GUI work in C++ instead of an interpreted language, you: a) spend a lot more time recompiling.
that is unfortunately true :(
b) can less easily tweak a running program to try out different ideas.
We're missing a good GUI designer... But we're slowly getting there ;)
c) have to spend a lot of effort to construct a domain-specific language (c.f Spirit; see (a)).
Not sure what you mean...
d) probably end up with a bigger codebase.
why so? Best, John -- John Torjo, Contributing editor, C/C++ Users Journal -- "Win32 GUI Generics" -- generics & GUI do mix, after all -- http://www.torjo.com/win32gui/ -- v1.5 - tooltips at your fingertips (work for menus too!) + bitmap buttons (work for MessageBox too!) + tab dialogs, hyper links, lite html