As of three weeks ago, I was in the throes of futzing with Python to make a clipart manager for Linux and hit what seemed to be a brick wall. For the most part, it is... that is unless you use Qt. Looks like PyQt4 is going to be the route for the API at this point. I've taken a break from that for now while I'm in the process of learning to use it, but I'll be coming back to it later.
Paladin has seen some renewed development. The last time I was actively developing it, I was in a burst of activity that kind of burned me out a bit. After a little time off, I'm back at it. There have been some bugfixes and it looks like there are enough that a new release isn't far off. There are a bunch of things that have been fixed and there is even work on getting it to build under GCC4.
I've also stumbled into actively looking into something that I thought was going to wait for later: a GUI designer. Yeah, yeah, there's MeTOS, BeBuilder, Bic, BeXL, and probably a few others. Each has their own problems and limitations. The biggest problem I see is a lack of active development, especially in light of the slow-but-steady progress Haiku is making. None of the open source ones seem all that usable -- though each has some nice features -- and there doesn't seem to be anything new brought to the table aside from an easy way to piece together the GUI. Right now, I'm working on a component model that so far seems to do its job pretty well and as far as I can tell is language-agnostic, making the use of something besides C++ (yab, Python, Perl, etc.) not too far-fetched. We'll see what happens.
School lets out for the summer tomorrow, so there should be some significant stuff happening in the next couple of months. Should be fun to see what, um, develops.
An usable GUI designer/builder is something that I would really love having in BeOS/Haiku. I simply can't get my head around building the GUI from code (I've started to program in Delphi 1/2, that explains it).
ReplyDeleteI've tried almost all the tools that are available in this department, only to find them all lacking here or there.
I tend to dislike those GUI builders that generate code (instead of storing the GUI layout as a file/resource) because the generated code tends to look really ugly and/or too intermixed with the "normal" code.
On the other hand, those that use resource files tend to be less flexible.
There is though a GUI builder (that generates code for your GUI) that I really like... mind you, it's a Win32 application, and specific to the D Programming Language. It's called Entice Designer (http://www.dprogramming.com/entice.php).
I do mention it because it does a really good job at generating code that doesn't gets in your way. You are allowed to manually alter the files as you please (with only some minor restrictions) and the GUI builder will still be able to work ok.
Maybe it will serve you as inspiration? I hope :-)
Grettings from Argentina.
Take care!
Oscar (aka BiPolar).