Re: Is there a good Windows or cross-platform Euphoria IDE?
- Posted by dcuny Oct 21, 2015
- 8692 views
The web itself provides the biggest write once run anywhere. We use buttons, labels, write texts in forms, watch video, and nobody complain that the gui dont looks like native. The problem here is the bad looking (and half implemented) controls provided by non native guis. Look at old TCL/TK guis, Swing Gui with Metal look and feel, FLTK and Fox Toolkit. All provide that ugly dated look and very fell customization options. Thats why i said once to Ryan that he should team with a designer to provide the look and feel for Redy. Maybe we, the programmers dont see, but programmer's art (in general) is ugly ;)
I agree there are a lot of "ugly" GUIs out there. Most of the ones you're citing aren't intrinsically ugly though. Most of them were developed in the Win95 era, and took on the look and feel of the time. Many simply haven't been updated since then, because the developers are more focused on other matters.
But people do complain that a GUI doesn't look native. The Metal design was quite stylish. It failed because people wanted a native look and feel, which is the approach that Swing takes today.
I agree that REDY could use a makeover - the scrollbars look like they came from the Motif toolkit. But skinning widgets isn't particularly difficult. The real issue is supporting all the various functionality (mouse, keyboard shortcuts) that can differ from platform to platform.
And a GUI API needs to provide more than just a canvas that renders with pretty widgets. It also needs to provide menus, dialogs, printing, audio, and so on. On Gnome and OS X, window-based menus are going to look out of place. Applications should use the default font of the theme, and present at the correct resolution (point size and DPI).
A pure-Euphoria GUI is certainly possible, but why would you want one? It would never be as feature-complete as the ones your users currently are using (although they might not initially notice). What benefit is there in settling for less?
- David
