Re: [9fans] Limbo Tk FAQ?

[Randolph Fritz <randolph@panix.com>]

In article <20010525065834.K21254@cackle.proxima.alt.za>, Lucio De Re wrote:
> On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 02:50:27PM -0400, geoff@collyer.net wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 
> I haven't tried VB or VC++, I must confess, perhaps I fear to
> discover that there are shortcuts out there, as long as you kneel
> to the right religion.  Oh, yes, there's vtcl out there too, but
> my prejudice against generated high level code gets in the way of
> me using it :-(
> 
> Is it all a matter of language idioms, then?
> 

I found VC++ GUI programming more grief than COBOL using cards!  :-)

My impression is that, so far, the best--in the sense of most widely
and easily usable--GUIs (still) come from the old Macintosh
environment.  Most of the major GUI applications came out of that
environment.  Even the worst Mac software usually makes some nod to
usability and pleasing appearance.

I don't, unfortunately, know very much about Mac internals; I find the
classical OS side of the Mac pretty scary.  But in GUI development,
they seem to have something, perhaps something still worth studying.
Consider that the original Mac had a workable, albeit limited, GUI in
128k (sic) of main memory.  Ok, they did quickly upgrade it to
512k. :-) Still, it seems to me that the original Mac developers had a
good handle on the core requirements of GUI development and
implemented them successfully.

One more research project I don't want to spend the time to pursue... :-(

Randolph