XDC2012: Programming languages for X application development

XDC2012: Programming languages for X application development

Posted Oct 4, 2012 13:03 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: XDC2012: Programming languages for X application development by flewellyn
Parent article: XDC2012: Programming languages for X application development

If the toolkits had a means of, say, importing a declarative description of a GUI layout, and generated the resulting code to draw the controls, with my own code called from callbacks as defined in the declaration...that would probably speed things up enormously.

Such technology existed in the early 1990's with the Tk toolkit. Its pack and place and later grid geometry management commands made laying out controls a breeze. Furthermore, as windows are resized, the controls reflow naturally and intuitively.

I did my first GUI programming under Tcl/Tk and it was absolute bliss. When I see the horrible things people need to do to get going with Gtk+ or Qt, I realize how lucky I was that Tk hid all the nasties.

Unfortunately, Tcl/Tk has fallen out of favor. :( Just because Tcl is a bit idiosyncratic doesn't mean we should forget all the great advances made by Tk.

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