Re: GUI Lib

From: Wardell, Charles <charles.wardell_at_dendrite.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 16:47:11 -0400

Thank you Bob for your comments. I guess I am not that familiar with the
Windows api calls for GUI. It seems way to complicated compared to stand
alone GUI Libs that I have seen like the mGui link I showed before. The
benefits with the later though, is that you can deal with a lib that is
supported.

The KIOSK though is something that I would love to tackle with forth but
then again, no GUI. Something like QNX with its microgui and Stack but then
No Forth?

Dilemma, Any opinions.

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Dickow [mailto:dickow_at_uidaho.edu]
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 3:25 PM
To: sftalk_at_forth.com
Subject: [sftalk] Re: GUI Lib

I think I see what you're getting at. You'd like a simpler way to, say, plop
a checkbox at a certain coordinate and end up getting the results of its
state at some point. You also might like a system that would let you drag
your components around until you got your GUI to look right, then have it
generate the code. Sort of like certain SmallTalk environments I know or
something. All without having to program directly with API calls.

No, I don't know of any packages that set graphics up for you quite this
way. I once used something like this that generated C code after you got
your GUI set up, then I would simply transport the various coordinates and
stuff over into my forth structures. That saved me some time. I always find
that these utilities lock you in to certain things, and can limit you, and
don't save as much time as you might want.

However, doing it with API calls for me is pretty quick itself when you get
the hang of it. I do use a lot of trial and error to get my gadgets placed
just right. So, in a sense my GUIs are 'hand coded,' but Windows has done
all the dirty work of driving the actual graphics display of course.

Forth can certainly do the job. As for development speed, you just have to
get used to it. As an example, a few months ago I cobbled up an application
for the book store where my wife works. They had been having to spend a lot
of time sending inventory data to an online sales service for posting on the
web. In one weekend I wrote an app that, at the click of a button, reads the
appropriate inventory data from a proprietary database created by another
application, compiles a comma-delimited ascii file in the format required by
the service, then sent the file by FTP to the service. My program has check
boxes, and buttons and a minimal GUI. It uses a free-ware FTP .dll library.
It does tasks such as parse a config file, has dialog boxes, puts up several
dialog boxes for user interaction, and a few other little things. It was
designed to be completely idiot-proof and pretty much a two-click
application. Various things like the file save dialogs were modeled on
examples and programs that come with SwiftForth. The programming was
EXTREMELY fast in forth. Most of my time was spent reverse engineering the
koo-koo gazillion-file database structure that I had to use to derive my
ultimate output file.

I don't know about DRdos. If you are looking for a 'tcp stack' (you must
mean networking words), those are really not too hard to program. I tutored
myself on it using the WWW-based pages out there on the net. I then wrote a
sort of mini-telnet in 216 lines of code. (sorry the example code in this
case is for Amiga. But if you can decode .lha files it is on my anonymous
ftp server at Budsy.turbonet.com).

Bob Dickow

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wardell, Charles" <charles.wardell_at_dendrite.com>
To: <sftalk_at_forth.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 11:32 AM
Subject: [sftalk] Re: GUI Lib

> Point's well taken. How do you go about designing your GUI. Is it all hand
> coded?
> Some of the projects I have been considering are KIOSK type applications.
> There are OS's designed specifically for this type of use, but for the
most
> part, Forth is unavailable. A simple forth with GUI and TCP Stack would
fit
> the bill. I am not comfortable with MS windows for this type of day in day
> out use. Put that together with Cost.
>
> I have looked at DRdos which has a dos stack. It's less then $25 bucks for
> distribution. Many forths out there, but none that will give a GUI
> interface.

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