About GUI and IDE Interface

[Marc-Antoine Parent]

On Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:42:12 -0400
  "Bob Calco" <robert.calco at verizon.net> wrote:
>OK the SWT thing (Eclipse) looks not very promising in 
>terms of merely
>bridging to it to supply native widgets to Oz - it's all 
>implemented in
>straight JNI. 

I am not surprised. SWT is a thin layer, as you say. 
Binding to SWT gives you very little.

The added benefit of Eclipse, as far as I can see, is that 
if you bind to the Eclipse APIs, you can extend Eclipse to 
handle Mozart at minimal cost. (i.e. just define the 
tools, the syntax coloring code, how to break the files 
into meaningful units, and you have an environment!) I 
know you have grander plans for your IDE, and those may 
involve more UI coding, but in terms of getting good IDE 
functionality in the shortest time, I don't see how you 
can beat reusing an existing IDE.


>I'm hacking through the SWT source and I think building a 
>native,
>cross-platform extension library for Oz modelled after 
>the SWT, with
>appropriate higher level logic and abstractions 
>implemented in native or
>even pure Oz functors would be a very doable thing.

I'm sure, and also worthwile. The downside is that you (or 
someone...) has to write all that platform-dependent code! 
My reaction to that is: Lots of work. Check if you have 
the manpower. Account for maintenance. 
On the plus side: Way more applications than the IDE 
alone!

>>From there, a GUI development environment written in Oz 
>>for Oz would be a
>desirable as well as doable thing.

Nice side effect ;-)

>The SWIG and wxWindows integration possibility still 
>ranks high, as an
>alternative, though these things are not mutually 
>exclusive.

I agree that a SWIG binding is also very very high yield 
for the effort. wxWindows is just one of countless 
applications of that, and then the IDE one of many of 
wxWindows. I certainly like the SWIG scenario, and anybody 
working on it will be adding much value to Mozart.

>(In the meantime, for Windows and Mono, I think I'll 
>press forward with the
>C# IDE implementation... I still want an Oz development 
>environment "sooner
>rather than later" I can work in to develop the cross 
>platform GUI
>components and eventual bootstrapped Oz IDE in...)

As I said, reuse of an IDE framework may get you there 
sooner. But maybe not. Maybe learning to integrate into 
Eclipse would take longer than finishing what is under 
way. You know best. But I encourage you to look at Eclipse 
from the reuse angle... It will certainly give you the 
most extra goodies at no cost (CVS integration etc.)

You may not be aware that someone already applied that 
approach to... C#! They got a nice tool out. I wonder how 
much work it cost them.

http://www.improve-technologies.com/alpha/esharp/

>So... yet another alternative. I love this discipline!

Don't we all!
Marc-Antoine Parent

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