From: Mark Hubbart <discord@...>
Date: 2004-08-09T11:01:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Free(real Free) GUI toolkits


On Aug 8, 2004, at 5:04 PM, Jan Sabbe wrote:

> Lothar Scholz wrote:
>> Hello Rando,
>> RC> Reinder Verlinde wrote:
>>>> "it works pretty well", combined with "it runs under apple's X11" 
>>>> really
>>>> means that it is not a Mac application at all, and Mac users will 
>>>> in all
>>>> likelihood not find it a suitable solution.
>>>>
>>>> Reinder
>> RC> You're probably right; but then again, there aren't ANY toolkits 
>> that do
>> RC> any better than that for cross-platform with OSX. wxwidgets 
>> technically
>> RC> works on OSX, but it's kind of a pain. I got it to compile once, 
>> but
>> RC> then I couldn't get python's wxPython to work with it and gave 
>> up. (I
>> RC> was trying to get the bittorrent wxPython stuff working.)
>> RC> Any others that exist (Including the local ruby favorite fox) 
>> only work
>> RC> under X11 anyway.
>> RC> (I believe QT is actually an exception to this, and they now 
>> provide a
>> RC> fully native OSX Framework. Are there ruby bindings for QT?)
>> The problem is different, it's not only an API question.
>> You simply can't generate a cross-platform GUI intensive application.
>> Point. Thats it. Thats what you must accept. It is possible with
>> Windows <-> Linux just because the Linux toolkits look much like the
>> windows Styleguide and where born more or less as with windows in
>> mind.
>
> FireFox and Thunderbird are pretty damn good. There are differences 
> ofcourse to make it more mac-like. Shortcuts using symbols, based on 
> command instead of control or alt. Changed menu structure (preferences 
> and quit under the application menu, instead of file and edit). The 
> usage of sheets instead of modal dialogs. Things could be better, but 
> none would require a massive rewrite, or needs the use of another 
> toolkit. So, yes, you need different versions for mac/linux/win to 
> make a decent gui app, but the differences aren't that major that you 
> need to rewrite your entire application.

I think I speak for more users than myself when I say that FireFox and 
Thunderbird are *not* Mac apps. Yes, they do pretty good, but they need 
to go a a bit further before they  will be able to compete with the 
other mac web browsers, IMHO.  My main gripe is that, even after the 
major changes they made to make it more mac-like, they still behave 
strangely. There a only a couple places left where there are major 
deviations from the usual mac app, but there are many items that behave 
almost, but not quite, like what you would expect. I think that this  
is especially a problem for more advanced users, since they are more 
likely to notice the differences.

> Allot of Java apps also integrate nicely. (for example Jedit). You 
> need changes, you need to follow the mac hig to give a nice 
> experience, but you don't need to rewrite it in either cocoa/carbon. 
> It is easier to get things right if you use cocoa instead of something 
> else, but it is not absolutely necessary for a nicely integrated mac 
> application.

Apple has been working to take java apps more and more towards being 
first class applications on macosx. With the ObjC <=> Java bridge, you 
can use all the cocoa classes in java apps, making porting a java 
program to cocoa rather simple. Also, they did a fairly good job of 
making the java Aqua theme fit in well.

cheers,
Mark