in reply to use AnyGUI

So, what I want to know is, is there a GUI wrapper module that presents a single interface to the calling code but internally uses whichever of those it can find present on the system? If not, why not?

This was tried several times in the C/C++ world. The "high-order bit" problem is that such an approach forces you towards the lowest common denomimator in feature set and behavior. That tends to underwhelm UI designers.

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Re: use AnyGUI
by jonadab (Parson) on Mar 01, 2003 at 23:48 UTC
    such an approach forces you towards the lowest common demonimator in feature set and behavior. That tends to underwhelm UI designers.

    Sure, but if we were willing to sacrifice the less capable GUIs (Motif, Tk), I think that for many projects the LCD between Win32, GTK, and Qt would be acceptable.

    Even GTK and Qt would be a welcome combination: there is Qt for OS X and GTK for WinXP, so such a module would be able to be used on (recent versions of) all three major GUI platforms (Windows, X11, Aqua). 

    for(unpack("C*",'GGGG?GGGG?O__\?WccW?{GCw?Wcc{?Wcc~?Wcc{?~cc'
.'W?')){$j=$_-63;++$a;for$p(0..7){$h[$p][$a]=$j%2;$j/=2}}for$
p(0..7){for$a(1..45){$_=($h[$p-1][$a])?'#':' ';print}print$/}

    [download]
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Re**2: use AnyGUI
by xmath (Hermit) on Mar 01, 2003 at 20:56 UTC
    Well, you can ofcourse support more advanced features, but it means that for GUI-frameworks that do not natively support such a feature the author of "AnyGUI" would have have implement this using the capabilities that are available.

    This is however obviously a rather tedious job and makes AnyGUI a very complex project.

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      This sounds a bit like the approach taken by wxWindows. It interfaces to GTK, motif, the Windows API, and OS X (I think). Anything that one or the other can't do is implemented directly by wxWindows. So everybody gets a high-functioning almost native toolkit. Pretty sweet.

      Too bad I haven't been able to get wxPerl to compile, but that's just me :-)

      I just realized that I was using the same sig for nearly three years.

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