[M3devel] UI, Trestle, native... Cocoa??

[Jay K]

I think what is a bit unusual about Trestle is how much it implements itself.
 
 
It does *not* appear to be a thin wrapper around a native event or control or window management interface. It appears to handle event routing itself, clipping itself, some aspects of drawing itself. I think it might only depend on the ability to draw dots, and to get some form of keyboard/mouse events.
 
 
*and* it is multithreaded.
Unusual for GUI libraries (e.g. Java swing).
 
 
Whenever I read about it, I get lost once they start talking about the locking protocol.
 
 
The "split" layout mechanism seems maybe nice.
  It bugs me how Windows encouraged pixel count layout and how much fixed size gui there is.
 
 
I suspect the authors knew or discovered far more than any of us here.
 
 
You probably can make a decent binding to Cocoa.
But I don't know.
 
 
Runtime and compiler support, often allow for nicer syntax, but I really don't know if a mere wrapper library will be nice/graceful or not. I would suggest looking into if you have enough "generation" ability to, e.g. spit the headers back out, or generate a nicer C++ library. And then you can probably without much difficulty make either a "straightforward" wrapper library or maybe even something a bit more idiomatic ... e.g. do you use OBJECT or not?
 
 
 > Trestle under X did not took my breath
 
 
I find Trestle GUI pretty difficult to interact with.
Using scrollbars for example.
I have trouble with most X GUI actually.
 
 
The Win32 changes are a bit encouraging though. With only a little bit of change the GUI is a slightly less little bit better. We still don't have the dpi problem fixed properly. I don't have a high dpi system.
 
 
Qt looks very nice...
 
 
 - Jay

----------------------------------------
> From: dragisha at m3w.org
> To: darko at darko.org
> Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:23:04 +0200
> CC: m3devel at elegosoft.com
> Subject: Re: [M3devel] UI, Trestle, native... Cocoa??
>
> I am about to do a port of some simple (in its GUI aspect) application
> to Mac.
>
> I am also discouraged (at least tried to) to near death :) by a guy from
> another community, he is 1000% sure Modula-3 cannot be made to support
> Cocoa not a "g" of gracefully.
>
> Trestle under X did not took my breath. After peeking and pooking around
> sources a bit, I think it was very nice project in its time, and
> reasonable one to use 12-15yrs ago, but things moved on. In other words
> - I cannot think an explanation to my customer why a GUI appliction of
> mine is not more.... GUIsh...
>
> I did a lot of Gtk+ in Modula-3, under Linux (and colleague did his
> testing on Windows while he was working with me on it) and from that
> experience I know it's not impossible to make native GUI work.
>
> In other words - count on me for low level binding/interfacing once I
> start doing my work on Mac - in few weeks time.
>
> On Mon, 2010-09-27 at 13:12 -0700, Darko wrote:
> > I can't say I'm interested in Trestle, and getting compatibility with Cocoa objects might be a hassle, but I am interested in Cocoa support in M3. The things that need to be done to make this happen are:
> >
> > - run time support for Objective-C objects, basically the ability to call Obj-C methods and reference Obj-C fields in objects
> > - conversion of Cocoa interfaces to M3. This can probably be automated to some degree, I've already gone through the process with Carbon API (admittedly from Pascal interfaces).
> >
> > If anyone wants to take on the first task I'd be happy to take on the second. Apple has Obj-C internals doco on the web.
> >
> >
> > On 25/09/2010, at 1:42 PM, Dragiša Durić wrote:
> >
> > > Is it feasible to make it mora native to Mac? Interesting?
> > >
> > > On Sat, 2010-09-25 at 12:31 +0000, Jay K wrote:
> > >> It draws all the controls itself.
> > >> The Mac version is the X Windows version.
> > >>
> > >> - Jay
> > >>
> > >> ----------------------------------------
> > >>> From: dragisha at m3w.org
> > >>> To: m3devel at elegosoft.com
> > >>> Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 13:41:19 +0200
> > >>> Subject: [M3devel] UI, Trestle, native... Cocoa??
> > >>>
> > >>> Anybody working UI's with Trestle? It is mapped no native widgets on
> > >>> Windows? What about Mac?
> > >>> --
> > >>> Dragiša Durić
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >
> > > --
> > > Dragiša Durić 
> > >
> >
>
> --
> Dragiša Durić 
>