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Best GUI lib?
Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 3:27 pm
by bartbes
There are 6 GUI libs on the wiki, but none of them look finished, all the libs I can find are just startups. Can you (=the lib creators) work together and finish something? I like where LoveUI is going, but the thing I need the most is a dialog, which I couldn't find (might be in there, might have looked over it). And something I'm almost sure of none of the libraries have: a list. I don't feel like creating my own lib, so.. one last time:
Work together and finish something
I hope we (=the community) are going to have a nice GUI lib.
Now that's finished, my question: Which GUI lib is best suited for the job (i.e. closest to being finished, having a lot of controls and easy way of adding new ones)?
Re: Best GUI lib?
Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 7:03 am
by appleide
I'm still working on mine (as of this morning), I am porting all old classes to the new class system that you've written. (I need to because in my old class system the functions weren't static and I was starting get problems. I cannot elaborate further because I forgot what problems.) It had to do with the ScrollView, though (was going to be the beginnings of a list).
Re: Best GUI lib?
Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 4:13 pm
by TsT
I'm also working on my own GUI lib(s) ... I already done lot of things (not released)
but I'm recently start to completly recode them.
I will try to publish some libs, for example :
- tree lib
(use to manage item (parent) in sub-items (child), ... with a global index with getbyid() support)
- advanced input lib
(to provide a new input interface, able to manage multiple mouse, advanced shortcut like sequence detection, use the mouse with keyboad, etc.)
- focus lib
(use to manage multiple focused items)
- loadsave lib
(to save boolean, string, table and be able to restore them at the next start, with multiple encoding (ascii,quoteprintable-like,base64) support) (another projet already do this, I don't remeber his name)
- draw layer lib
make love able to draw with a z-index
- and more...
Best Regards,
Re: Best GUI lib?
Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 7:18 pm
by Star Crunch
bartbes wrote:And something I'm almost sure of none of the libraries have: a list.
Like this?
I've got one in TacoShell, though it's single-selection only. (Also, no scroll bar.) I left it and a few other
widgets out of the demo.
A dialog is a fairly basic application of a couple ideas, though I have yet to distill such ideas into handy docs.
Code for it, however, is handy.
Widgets (controls) have mostly been added on an as-needed basis. I omitted a few from the code, where either it
wasn't "official" (i.e. while generally useful, it was an
ad hoc or one-shot solution) or wasn't in 2D (e.g. see
the ring about halfway through the trailer
here).
(I have a decent idea for a demo that shows most of the GUI to effect, and in a practical way, free time has been
less than forthcoming lately.)
The library
is rather mature, though as noted above and elsewhere it lacks documentation. Its users thus far have
only been myself and three other programmers with whom I share a small office, so that had never been very urgent. But
then, for the first few years the others didn't use Lua much, and now all of a sudden EVERYBODY is, A LOT
So it's in our own best interests too.
I've
LuaDoc'd about half the API--of which the GUI is actually only a small, albeit easily demonstrable,
part. A bunch of examples / overviews are in order, too.
(I could walk you through some steps by chat, but the Netherlands is 7 time zones ahead of Monterrey, so...)
Re: Best GUI lib?
Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 4:01 am
by Xcmd
Actually I rather like that there are multiple options for GUIs. Because if one doesn't do something I like then I'm sure another one will. I applaud our current GUI developers. Better you than me.
Re: Best GUI lib?
Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 5:46 am
by bartbes
Yes, but I see this skill and realize (again) it'd be better if everyone worked together, there is certainly no lack of skill and this would increase in the development speed, performance and stability of the lib they are working on.
Re: Best GUI lib?
Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 1:27 pm
by Robin
This keeps coming up in the Open Source world: "Why don't project X and project Y just merge? Then they can work together."
But, just like Xcmd said, it's better if there are multiple projects, each with a different take on the whole GUI thing. That doesn't mean they can't learn from each other's code, though.
Re: Best GUI lib?
Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 1:31 pm
by bartbes
True, but I guess there should be bigger dev teams, the way it currently is a lot of GUI libs are left without full functionality, never to be looked at again.
Re: Best GUI lib?
Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 9:56 pm
by Garotas*Gostosas
what about a copromise? you do a mashup like for example "Taco Shell vs Tainted GUI". (only) once. with everything in it so far for the users who want or need to concentrate on other things.
from there on every team takes the code and develops on their own again as it fits them best - they can even rewrite everything from scratch and stuff.
this way every one gets what they need without too much organisation and the creativity doesn't get limited. but on the other side all the work of implementing the features of the other codes hasn't to be done by just one team or individual ...
Re: Best GUI lib?
Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 12:29 pm
by Robin