Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.albasani.net!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: BGB Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Android?Why Dalvik? Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 22:26:48 -0700 Organization: albasani.net Lines: 62 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news.albasani.net fDZ6gJzqghRp/xyAK+jv1LiV6cwnpI2jQmMtRX+4Ld+BJRtT8V+hsRpTFgjmNWSsPyCwBo1l1PbqwoxnfJAYb30xFgsdiVkmD/NxumvS3u8jW4OV3jPJ5gHnwsWk1n48 NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 05:29:53 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: news.albasani.net; logging-data="yKyJw4WEbXmF3QaUY/DSj2jza7tExTJNXu2+stDc4TFDrnR9OXgaqItV/6LaMCCdwVhYkuIaQN+xL5XsVrh3fXpoDJxM0BF+9tpFRDLzRiTQIDH9rGs4/rG5NmcA6RN8"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@albasani.net" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110414 Thunderbird/3.1.10 In-Reply-To: Cancel-Lock: sha1:33Icu3og9UmGY0eFFFO/ltT89g0= Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:4789 On 5/30/2011 7:14 PM, Steve Sobol wrote: > In article, Lawrence D'Oliveiro says... >> >> In message, Steve Sobol wrote: >> >>> In article, BGB says... >>> >>>> "well, this is a Windows' app, of course it doesn't work on Mac or >>>> Linux...", despite that all 3 versions will likely build from the same >>>> source. >>> >>> I'd bet, these days, that the root cause of that situation is the fact >>> that the three operating systems have *completely* different GUI's. >> >> So, has anybody come up with a worthwhile ?universal? GUI that fits every >> form factor and platform? > > Java's Swing, Nokia's Qt, wxWindows and gtk are about as close as it > gets. > which is in a way sort of sad really... mostly in my case, I just sort of take the lazy route, and do most GUIs via custom UI widget code and OpenGL. granted, this doesn't allow native widgets (although one can do a fairly "generic" style along the Lines of GTK meets Windows Classic), and requires the app to drag around its own fonts, but, good enough... in any case, since I often use OpenGL already, it makes a lot more sense to use GL for the GUI as well, rather than have to deal with multiple system-specific GUI backends (yes, the GTK people will claim lots that their stuff is portable and so on, but generally its functionality on non-Linux systems has been, not very impressive...). granted, yes, there are possible drawbacks with the OpenGL route as well (screen resolution issues, needing a GPU, ...). but, no ideal solutions exist AFAICT... > >> This is why, you?ll notice, developers of Free Software like to > decouple the >> GUI from the underlying functionality. The main functionality is often made >> available through command-line tools, while the GUI is just a front-end to >> these. >> >> This also gives you the instant advantage of very powerful workflow >> automation, which tends to be clumsy with a GUI. > > Yup :) > yeah... generally it makes a lot more sense IMO to build the apps' core logic and machinery and build the UI on top than it does to try to build the app starting with the UI.