I should clarify. I don’t think they’re
trivial, merely not hard science.
They’re a large project, and of course I don’t have one,
because I haven’t the time. I
am the architect for a company that produces an entirely different product
– unrelated to developer tools.
At present I also have my hands full with
porting Java to OpenBSD, implementing the O/R mapping
layer of Wotonomy, and a few other projects that I am
involved with to greater or lesser degrees.
I hope I never conveyed the impression that
I think they’re trivial – merely that with a good application
framework to start with, they are not rocket science. And if they’re oriented around
object-configuration, rather than code generation/round-trip-engineering, they
are much much simpler, and their result is far easier
to maintain.
Regards,
Christian.
P.S.
Paradigm only sets me off if it’s used by someone who has no idea
what the word means… which, I admit, is most people. –cg.
-----Original Message-----
From: platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Bob Foster
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003
8:48 AM
To: platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: SWT History and
Design Decisions (WAS: [platform-swt-dev] AWT Toolkit using SWT (was: From
Swing to SWT))
My posting wasn't directed to you -
I knew you have a GUI builder - but to those who think that GUI builders are
trivial applications. Since you charge for yours, I assume you understand it is
non-trivial. ;-}
Thanks for the link. I will check it
out. But since you have already told me what I wanted to know...
There are GUI builders that generate
source code and those that don't (like yours). My feeling has always been that
round-tripping is a *requirement* and if you want to generate source code then
you open yourself up to having to round-trip from the source (or object) code.
However, if you don't generate source code you are free to round-trip from
whatever intermediate representation you have chosen. Either way satisfies the
requirement. One of them (the source code path) is much harder than the other.
Your GUI builder generates
"property resource files". So it is in the long and honorable
tradition of GUI builders like NextStep, Apple's Project/Interface builder,
even Visual Studio. Personally, I think this is a good approach.
What I don't understand is why you
started this thread? There has to be some failing of either SWT or your
descriptive techniques that leads you to think that adapting Conga to SWT would
be hard. Specifically, what are they?
PS The word 'paradigm' tends to set
me off. ;-}