From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Matt H Message-ID: <359728328.20010525152644@proweb.co.uk> To: "rog@vitanuova.com" <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re[2]: [9fans] Limbo Tk FAQ? In-Reply-To: <20010525095153.BFB8D19A4F@mail.cse.psu.edu> References: <20010525095153.BFB8D19A4F@mail.cse.psu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 15:26:44 +0100 Topicbox-Message-UUID: a847f9f8-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Hello rog, >> > graphics programming still >> > reminds me of assembler programming: way too much attention >> > to way too much irrelevant detail. >> >> I'm pleased to discover I am not alone in this, although I couldn't >> have phrased it as succintly or as accurately as you did. And I >> enjoy assembly programming, but I find graphics programming far >> too tedious. rvc> i think that's because you've got multi-dimensional inputs, often with rvc> associated state, which are much harder to deal with than the rvc> unidimensional, stateless input stream of a command-line program, for rvc> example. rvc> at least with limbo/tk, the language is decently multi-threaded, so rvc> it's often possible to carve a program into logically independent rvc> threads, each of which is quite simple, rather than the age old "one rvc> big state machine" paradigm which is the only way of doing things in rvc> many GUI programming interfaces. despite its superficial simplicity, rvc> i'll bet that Visual Basic falls into that category too. rvc> where GUI programming is inevitably tedious is when you're dealing with rvc> input forms (buttons, entry widgets, sliders, tickboxes, etc, etc), as rvc> there are so many possible states to think about and deal with in the rvc> program. i think that this is going to be the case regardless of rvc> language. the key is probably to minimise (eliminate?) instances of rvc> this kind of interface. rvc> i've found limbo/tk to be a very productive environment, compared to rvc> others i've used (principally the NeXTStep interface (now MacOS X), rvc> which i believe is well regarded). the first-class strings in limbo rvc> sit very well with the string-based nature of tk. strings nicely rvc> i'm sorry, i'm off topic. well, while you're there any idea when signed applets for IE limbo will grace our lives? -- Matt mailto:matt@proweb.co.uk I'm floating on a lilo in the Sea of Alright