[M3devel] On Trestle, OpenGL, etc...

[Daniel Solaz]

I think the only way to go is a single Modula-3 API that wraps the native toolkit on each platform, sort of like wxwidgets.  Where there is no single native toolkit, choose the best or most used.  Portability, full interoperability and looking/feeling native are the key points here.

Developing a new toolkit in pure Modula-3 is a waste of effort.  Sun has spent years and billions in Swing, and it still sucks in a different way every platform it works on.  Worst of all (for me at least) is how it incorrectly and incompletely mimics the native look and feel, mainly Motif and GTK, but Mac OS X too; on Windows it looks way better but is still far from perfect.  SWT is a bit more difficult to use, and not available (yet?) on every platform, but to me it is the right way to go.

Making Trestle look good will only get us so far.  I haven't looked at it for years, but unless it has changed quite a bit it would require rewriting significant parts.  Text handling comes to mind, and scrollbars too.

Regards.
-Daniel