[glade--]Re: [gtkmm] May I do a Java-Port of glade--

[Christof Petig <christof petig-baender de>]

Clemens Eisserer wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I´m very new at this list. So I hope its the wright way to ask such questions and you´re not angry that I waste your time.
>
> Maybe you know java-gnome ( http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net ). It does quiet the same as glade-- only for java and with a differrent technology. The thing I like most is, that you can create compiles java-gui apps with gcj and java-gnome. But enought....
>
> This project has for now only a libglade binding, and can load widgets with libglade during the execution. This is very unflexible and I want to add a feature like glade-- has: To build the source-code from the glade-xml files. I thought glade-- is a good project to start with, because C++ and Java are not so different as you may think...
>
> So  where can I start, and how much time will it need to port only the sourcecode-builder?
>
> Thank you for your help and much luck toward the future, Linuxhippy 

Hi Clemens,

Feel free to do it. You may even ask me privately in German (perhaps by 
telephone if you wish, I'd give you my numbers if requested for). But 
... I don't know how much java-gnome and gtkmm differ. It would only 
make sense if they resemble each other in design.

Since gtkmm is really STL centric designed and Java has no STL and can 
not support an STL (no templates possible), there seems to be trouble ahead.

You should take a small test project (glade--/tests is full of them), 
generate C++ code and compare that to the needed Java code, if more than 
small changes are needed (e.g. replacing '->' by '.' and replacing 
Gtk::Widget * by Gtk::Widget), I'd suggest a fork. We can probably share 
the infrastructure (Code generation library, Widget tree walking, 
design, xml reading) but I fear that the writers might be too different 
(thinking of e.g. the menu or toolbar code which uses many push_back s).

On the other hand I'd like to say that I did not see a cleaner OO design 
than what I realized for glademm based programs (but admittedly I didn't 
look that far).
    Christof