GUI builders considered harmful (Was: anygui, anydb, any opinions?)

[Jeff Epler]

On Sun, Jun 05, 2005 at 02:38:16PM -0500, Mike Meyer wrote:
[...]
> The first, and most obvious, thing that GUI builders do is force the
> developer to specify an exact position - if not size - for the
> graphical elements of the UI.
[...]

Certainly some---or even most---builders work like this.  But there's no
reason that a GUI GUI builder can't work in terms of the more
sophisticated layout algorithms that are available in most modern GUI
toolkits.

I've written a GUI builder for Tcl/Tk (some old versions live at
http://unpy.net/~jepler/nf/ but they're very out of date).  The core of
the application is the part that can write Tcl source code to regenerate
the screen as it's currently displayed.

The user can either use graphical tools like "insert widget", "show
properties", "pack earlier/later", "automatically add accelerator keys",
or script the thing by typing in Tcl.  Want to use the grid manager?
Fine, go ahead.  The graphical interface to the grid command may be
poor, but the commandline interface works great.  When things are as you
want them, just "save", and you can trivially "source" the resulting Tcl
code from your Tcl/Tk app.

I'm not trying to evangelize Tcl/Tk above any other language/toolkit,
but I am saying that by pairing an interpreted language with a GUI
toolkit, you can get a powerful GUI builder that instantly has top-notch
scrptability and also the guarantee that you can use the powerful
features of the GUI toolkit.  

I didn't do a survey of existing software before writing mine, but I
don't know of another builder that takes this kind of approach.  I
wonder why not.

Jeff
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