What is the current status of GUI programming with D Language? Are the language developers planning include GUI in the standard library?
The List (compiled from answers)
DWT (SWT binding)
GtkD (GTK binding)
wxD (wxWidgets binding)
QtD (Qt binding)
The most mature one is DWT, a port of SWT to D. There's also DFL and a whole host of bindings to GUI libraries written in other languages. Most of these aren't that mature yet, but DWT is. However, one thing to keep in mind is that D2 is on the horizon, so you might want to check whether the library is likely to be ported to D2 quickly.
I doubt that any of these will be included in the standard library anytime soon. The "official" standard library, Phobos, has a fairly minimalist attitude. The "unofficial" standard library, Tango, is not so minimalist, but still has a more systems programming bent to it. BTW, what's the difference if it's not in the standard library? I can see why this would be important for small, miscellaneous pieces of functionality where the effort to find, install, etc. a library for each one is significant compared to the amount of functionality the library adds, but not for big stuff like GUIs.
You might want to check out wxd, a wxWindows library for D.
It sounds like what you want.
From site dlang.org ( from FAQ dlang.org/faq.html ):
http://wiki.dlang.org/GUI_Libraries
I found to:
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?action=browse&id=GuiLibraries&oldid=AvailableGuiLibraries
There are a list of GUI libraries and the status of them.
Finally, from http://www.dsource.org:
http://www.http://www.dsource.org/projects
There are a list of projects in groups.
One of group is named "Libraries-GUI".
I think there is a full list of GUI libraries for D language.
I think DWT looks like the most mature currently usable solution, especially if you need cross platform. As for a gui being included in the standard library, it is stated previously that it won't happen, neither for Phobos nor Tango.
Hybrid looks interesting (never tried that though). If you are a java dev then DWT is the natural migration from swt but otherwise I would recommend DFL. Have a look at the dsource list too and scroll down to GUI-Libraries.
I think it's a good thing that gui libraries are separate from standard library.
There is also on the works a binding for QT. Not useful at the moment, but it seems that is being done by QT engineers.
DWT now is not on dsource but on bitbucket: DWT2
Related
After a long evaluation period of mainstream toolkits Qt, WxWidget, GTK i came to the conclusion that it does not make sense to religiously equalize the different platform. Now more then ever before.
In the days before Java portability meant, that platform dependent code was located in known places and should be small but not none. No write once, run everywhere marketing.
Is there any GUI tookit - experimental or commerical (even outdated or dead projects) - that is going this way. It would need to give me native widgets of course. I would like to have a look at them before i start my own toolkit
If you think this is a stupid idea tell me why (cause everybody else is doing it differently there may be a reason i don't see)
As someone who zealously believes that GUIs should be drawn with native widgets, I must say I've been very impressed with wxWidgets, although you mention that at the beginning.
As far as I know, wxWidgets uses native widgets whenever possible, and indeed it does also include platform-specific features that are neither possible nor relevant on other platforms. A good example of this is how you can use the native Mac OS X menu, while on other systems it won't do squat. There are other and better examples.
I must mention wxPython in particular, in case you either don't want to or just don't have the time to write a C++ program. wxPython astonished me when I tried it out first, and I even managed to make a stand-alone .exe file from it that worked on a fresh install of Windows 2000 without any updates or particular runtime environments.
If wxWidgets doesn't suit your needs, I wonder what would. :) Hurray for wxWidgets!
AFAIK, wxWidgets uses the platform's native widgets whenever possible.
Have a look at SWT, it tries to use the widgets of the underlying platform as much as possible.
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 6 years ago.
Improve this question
I'm trying to find a programming language I feel really comfortable learning and using for desktop/GUI application development. I realize it's unlikely that any language meets ALL of these criteria, but I'd like to find one that meets as many as possible. I've listed the following features ROUGHLY in order from most desirable/important to least.
Ideal Language Features:
Code Style: C/Java-like
GUI Development: Easy, elegant, and platform-Native styling
Community: Widely documented, active development, friendly & helpful, unity of focus
Object-oriented
Garbage Collection, no worrying about pointers, etc
Native compilation, NO 3rd-party runtimes like GTK or .NET
Multi-platform (can be compiled on *nix, Windows, Mac)
Reasonably fast
Mixed typing (soft-typed, OR both soft- and strict-typed -- i.e. Pike)
Background:
Most importantly, I need something that is straight foward and reasonably familiar, and something that isn't going to require a deep understanding of platform-specific APIs. I can't afford to spend a lot of time learning to develop Win32 apps in C++ for example. I've used wxWidgets, and liked the basic usage, but I'm really wanting to use a language with garbage collection, dynamic typing, and so on.
My frustration with Java, C#, and others is the need for a 3rd party runtime. I don't want end users to have to worry about installing and maintaining a separate platform.
Now then. Ideas??
Haha, due to the constraints you imposed you are now left with HTML and javascript. Good luck :)
The answer to your question is simply: None.
You excluded all desirable languages and platforms in your question.
I'd suggest you throw away your aversion against .NET and go with Delphi Prism. It's not C#, it is cross-platform compatible (everything is officially supported on Mono) and you can create applications that bring the runtime with them (Mono as part of your application).
I'd suggest Groovy and Griffon. Groovy is a dynamic language (like Ruby / Python) that runs on the JVM and integrates with millions of Java libraries out there easily. Griffon is a high-productivity RAILS-like framework for developing GUIs. Groovy has been around for 5 years and has a robust community and is supported by SpringSource (now division of VMWare). Griffon is a bit younger, but also has a fairly robust community.
These seem to fit your criteria.
I know I switched from Java to Grails (web framework written in Groovy that's similar to Rails), and haven't looked back.
Have you looked at QT? It's a really great GUI library and there are bindings for just about every language in common usage. There is a ton of documentation and a wide community. You mention that you want to do something in a language with garbage collection and dynamic typing, but rule out Python and Ruby, which are the 2 most popular languages that fit this criteria (also, they both have great QT bindings, I use pyQT4 and it is just awesome). They really aren't that far from what you do in Java/C, you just end up writing a lot less.
Wow you really limit your choices. I'm going to jump on the QT bandwagon and recommend C++.
Most of the objects in QT inherit from another object that sort of does it's own garbage collection.
There is incredible documentation out there for it.
QT is extremely powerful and has most of the elements you would like, and is extensible if you want to modify elements yourself.
If you do a static build for your release build the people you give the application to won't need distribute any other libraries as they will all be built into the .exe file.
The next iteration of Delphi is said to be cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). I think it meets all your requirements except garbage collection.
No language meets all of those restrictions. Technically, it sounds like you're asking for something almost identical to Java but then explicitly disallow Java for unstated reasons. Conceptually, it sounds like you're looking for Python or Ruby but disallow them for using slightly different syntax.
Given the order of priorities, I think the closest you'll find in existing languages might be C with the Boehm GC and GTK+ for the GUI (and GLib for the object system). You do say "No GTK" under "No third-party runtime required", but I'm not sure what "runtime" you refer to here, since IIRC it's just a bunch of C libraries.
Given the specificity of the requirements, I think your best bet is to write your own language. Compilers really aren't that hard to write anymore. There are off-the-shelf tools to help with parsing and code generation and math and text processing and GC and so on. Once you get started you'll probably find people willing to help port it. Many existing cross-platform GUI libraries (like wxWidgets) use C/C++ so if you have a decent FFI you can use that, too. You want "support" and "documented" but if you're the primary author you'll understand it better than anybody. The hardest part about a language is design, and it sounds like you have a picture in your head of exactly what the language should be already.
There are a few if you can accept either WxWindows or GTK or QT as a toolkit.
In the order of my personal preference would be:
Eiffel Studio
D with the D-GTK binding
F#
javascript?
might be not the fastest one and doesn't fully address all your needs, but hey... its everywhere and easy to learn
didn't read after the list, but with prism You can probably achieve most your goals.
or You can try Qt and c++ autopointers
Silverlight could actually give you enough cross-platform availability to use C#/.NET, but I am not sure it fits all your requirements.
Sounds like Action Script 3 will make you happy. But it's more web oriented but you could try to make a projector or an Air application. I think it's a good solution because you can do anything with AS3 (image, video, text, sound video text keyboard and mouse input, pear to pear and 3d since flash 10, ...) and it's cross platform and you can use it on the web or your desktop :)
If you are a pure root coder (using vim and only command line for ex) you can make your whole app without using the flash ide, by just writing your as files and compiling them with mxmlc (that comes with the free flex sdk).
I suggest Python. Although it doesn't fit your first requirement of coding style, but it fits all your other requirements!
GUI Development: Easy, elegant, and platform-Native styling --> Yes
I'd suggest that you try wxPython (wxWidgets for Python). This is so "native" on Python that about 90% of all the wxWidgets code examples on the Internet are for Python! I've personally used TkInter, Gtk and wxPython. All of them are well supported on Python. My personal choice is wx.
Community: Widely documented, active development, friendly & helpful, unity of focus --> YES
Object-oriented --> Yes
Garbage Collection, no worrying about pointers, etc --> Yes
Native compilation, NO 3rd-party runtimes like GTK or .NET --> Yes. - You can eiter:
pack a single dll with your code - or
use py2exe which is able to create a single executable out of your project
Multi-platform (can be compiled on *nix, Windows, Mac) --> Yes.
Reasonably fast --> Yes. Well, it's not the fastest out there, but close enough that some serious projects are done in Python only.
Mixed typing (soft-typed, OR both soft- and strict-typed -- i.e. Pike) --> Yes.
Regarding your first requirement I'd say that you should give Python at least a try. It requires very little effort to get started. There is a 2-hour tutorial which gives you a serious introduction. There's a Basic to Advanced tutorial where I'd almost guarantee that you'll be writing your first application on the second day.
I also feel your pain Brian. Most time when I ask questions about desktop GUIs the only answer I get is: "Make it Web". You really nailed it, since your question is still open inspite some really non-constructive answers...
I've been watching closely JavaFX 2, it solves some of Swing problems and seems very promising. This may be the only thing Oracle did right since getting Java from Sun.
UPDATE:
.NET is finally becoming an open-source, cross-platform solution. .NET Core allows native compilation for multiple devices.
The new .NET experience is exactly what I was looking for when I asked this question several years ago.
Original:
Lots of good suggestions, despite being salted with negativity throughout.
I think I'm going to go with C# and Mono. I like C# well enough syntactically (I've been accused often of being shallow, but the syntax of a language is just as important to me as its features, because I spend a lot of time writing in that particular syntax). Although similar to Java, it has a few unique features that I appreciate, and I think the community seems more open-minded.
My biggest complaint about Java besides performance, frankly, is the community. It seems infected with an excess of arrogance, and it also seems to be very fragmented in terms of support for and development on various overlapping libraries, tools, and so on. The community surrounding Mono seems much more organized.
Actually, so does .NET itself, for that matter. Sun is a big enterprise company that seems every bit as confused about what it IS and what it DOES as Microsoft or IBM, yet they seem to be doing an even worse job of leading and organizing their platform than Microsoft, which is pretty tragic.
I am working on a new small utility desktop application but I am not really able to choose the GUI framework to use. I have worked on both JAVA,C# and C++, so language is not really a constraint. My criteria are:-
A very well designed architecture, something like QT. It's better if it follows typical C++ design methodologies.
Layout management should be easy, intuitive and not really cumbersome. I hate adjusting pixels on screen.
Its license should be open.
It should look good :)
Mentioned QT seems to comply to all your requirements. QT has "deploy everywhere" attribute, whilst Java needs no deploying at all (it depends on what is use of your utility).
Ad. 2 QT has really convenient GUI designer.
Ad. 3 LGPL. Usually it is enough.
Ad. 4 It is always matter of taste. IMO QT4 looks awesome under linux, but it's windows look'n'feel is correct at best. It's strong point is, that without additional tweaks it almost everywhere looks native.
I've been using Swing, and it works fine. NetBeans (a decent IDE by itself) even supports graphical GUI building.
It's well designed (basically
everything is done with listeners,
functions that are registered for a
certain event). It has bindings, so
you don't have to write code to set
up a value in a text field or read
it out
Layout is not perfect, but
acceptable within NetBeans. It's
WYSIWYG (almost). Look-and-feel can
be changed on the fly.
License is free. Source-code is not
available, I think.
Looks fine on Windows and Linux,
less so on OSX.
You could always try SWT. The advantages of Java with the standard L&F of supported operating systems.
Well designed. Lots of
documentation, and very easy to
develop with. (If you know Swing,
you can pick up SWT in no time.)
I believe layout managers do exist
that support SWT. I'm not positive
about this though, as I typically
don't use layout managers too much.
Uses the Eclipse Public
License. Should meet most of
your requirements.
From Wikipedia on SWT:
SWT is written in Java. To display GUI elements, the SWT implementation accesses the native GUI libraries of the operating system using JNI (Java Native Interface) in a manner that is similar to those programs written using operating system-specific APIs. Programs that call SWT are portable, but the implementation of the toolkit, despite the fact that it is written in Java, is unique for each platform.
Hope that helps you.
I'd suggest wxWidgets if you want to program in C++ or wxPython (the python language binding of wxWidgets if you know or don't mind learning Python.
Architecture is similar to QT I think.
Layout using sizers. Quite easy once you get the hang of it.
Liberal open source license.
Widgets are native on all platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux).
I'm using Emacs, with CLISP and Slime, and want to be able to draw pictures on the screen. I'm specifically thinking about drawing graphs, but anything that would let me draw basic shapes and manipulate them would be able to get me started.
Doug is right; CAPI will work fine. Other things you can try:
cltk: http://www.cliki.net/Lisp-Tk
I know that Allegro has something for Windows programming also, but I've never tried it.
What may also work is cells-gtk: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells-gtk/
Again, I can only tell you that it exists but not how bad it is or if it even really works...
I can not comment also on the quality of
http://www.cliki.net/GTK%20binding
But that's mostly what is available.
Corman Lisp probably has something to offer for Windows programming also.
Anyway, the choices on Windows are relatively slim. The you can probably have the most confidence in CAPI, which is used for the LispWorks IDE on Windows, Linux, MacOS X and on quite few big unices also...
Regards
I think I've found my own answer. Clojure seems to have everything I was looking for, just because I can now use all of the Java GUI items natively in LISP. It is a different dialect of LISP than the Common-Lisp I was using, but seems to have a lot of community support, and integrates with my Windows installation of Emacs either through SLIME or through the Inferior-Lisp interpreter. So far I've been very impressed.
Oh, a code sample:
(. javax.swing.JOptionPane (showMessageDialog nil "Hello World"))
Any guesses what this does? :)
Bill Clementson's blog has quite a bit on Clojure, including a lot of helpful posts on installing it. See here: his posts on Clojure
You could switch from CLISP to the free LispWorks Personal Edition and use the CAPI Graphics Ports drawing API.
Or you could use Lisp's Foreign Function Interface and use one of the graphics toolkits available for your OS.
For rolling your own (like you said, basic shapes) try Lispbuilder-SDL or one of the cl-cairo FFIs (it's just my guess that the latter work with MS Windows, though).
I know this is an old post, but so the information is here for others like me who find this thread looking for the same thing.
This library for tk bindings in common lisp seems to work fairly well.
http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/
Clojure is an excellent Lisp, and Swing is a solid (if not particularly visually exciting) windowing toolkit. If you want do do more advanced graphics and/or dabble with game programming you might want to check out Slick, which is a general purpose graphics/game library that sits on top of Swing and gives you access to OpenGL and lots of other stuff.
I've found the Clojure/Slick combination an excellent way to do exploratory graphics programming, as you can interact with the graphics window directly from the REPL.
There's cl-cairo2 - a binding to Cairo vector drawing library. It can be used to draw various pictures on various surfaces. There's a cl-2d library that uses cl-cairo2 to draw charts.
And there's cl-gtk2 - a binding to Gtk+ library. You can create widgets that are drawn with cl-cairo2 (or cl-2d) that draw what you want.
CLISP users might find The following useful for their graphics applications:
cl-vectors is a pure Common Lisp
library to create, transform and
render anti-aliased vectorial paths.
It can be installed using
ASDF-Install.
http://projects.tuxee.net/cl-vectors/
Vecto is a simplified interface to the
powerful CL-VECTORS vector
rasterization library....the results
can be saved to a PNG ... Since Vecto
and all supporting libraries are
written completely in Common Lisp,
without depending on external non-Lisp
libraries, it should work in any
Common Lisp environment. Vecto is
available under a BSD-like license.
The current version is 1.4.3, released
on August 26, 2009.
http://www.xach.com/lisp/vecto/
I want to start programming with D. I have a simple application in mind that needs a GUI but I want to make sure it's portable to Linux/Windows/Mac equally well and with minimal (no) change for each platform.
wxD is looking like the contender of choice because I know the wx toolkit already.
I see fltk4d as a contender and a (unfinished) wrapper around Qt.
Are there any other truly cross platform GUI toolkits for D that will go where I want with little effort and what would the the toolkit of choice for people here?
GtkD should be a very good option for you as a stable Windows/Linux/Mac GUI toolkit.
DWT was once considered the standard, it has its own newsgroup on the Digital Mars server and I think Walter Bright may have called it the standard too. I don't think it's completely working on Mac but this should change in the future.
Here is a nice list of some other options but most have less active development and/or are not yet ready for production.
I have not used any of D's GUI libraries, but I would go with wxD if I wanted to use one now. I would pick it because I think wxD would have the most native looking controls and is cross-platform. Especially since you already know wx, it looks like a good choice.
I'm actually writing a cross-platform GUI library, Dynamin, but I have not released it yet. It is not a port; ported libraries tend to not have as nice of APIs or take advantage of as many language features. But it is not far enough along to do more than simple programs. I also don't have a Mac backend or GTK theme yet.