Re: What's wrong with VDKBuilder?

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

On Mon, 14 Aug 2000, Hassan Aurag wrote:

> 
>  Actually that's my only question. The why of the question is simple. 
> Glade seems to be THE Gnome RAD, but I have found by accident that 
> VDKBuilder was excellent, and since GIDE seems to be utterly dead, 
> VDKBuilder is the next best solution.

I wouldn't call a project dead where the last commit was a week ago
(according to bonsai).  Did you check on the project's mailing list before
coming to this conclusion?

Well, it looks like VDKBuilder is designed to target a different API to
the gtk API (VDK, which is a library built on top of gtk, and has a
different interface).  Therefore it is not a substitute for glade.

>  Actually, I found out about VDKBuilder in a slashdot post in response to 
> (I think) Miguel's comments about code-reuse.
>  And while you are at it, why don't we use code-reuse ourselves. I mean 
> it doesn't have to be bonobo when we talk code reuse, even though bonobo 
> is important. How come each time the gnome-hackers start something, they 
> start it from scratch. Are all existing GPL'ed software crappy? 

We do reuse other software where appropriate.  Sometimes the existing
software can't do what is required (the flow of an event driven GUI
program is quite different to most console apps, so a rewrite is sometimes
necessary.  GMC is probably the most obvious example of this).

> Take the gnome-admin project versus linuxconf. Helix-tools are still at 
> 1% of linuxconf's capabilities. Heck, I still remember I could setup dns 
> from a GUI since RedHat 5.0 and maybe before that. Evolution is still at 
> 25% of Balsa's. Actually if Balsa folks used gtkhtml to show the 
> messages, Evolution would be at 5% of Balsa's power. How come no one 
> thought of copying the imap/pop3/mbox code from pine for instance instead 

Because the pine licence doesn't allow it.  That is unless evolution was
distributed as a patch to pine :)  Again, the pine code may not be
structured correctly for use in evolution.

> of rewriting it from scratch with all the bug generation that such a 
> behavior might bring. 
>  Gnome basic is the most ridiculously funny example on non-code reuse. We 
> have Python, and whatever your Gnome visual basic will become, it would 
> never be easier to learn/use than any visual python.

Except that python can't execute VBA code, which is the whole point of
GB.  Having a python plugin for the spreadsheet is not going to help in
acheiving 100% excel compatibility.  No one is saying you should develop
new macros for your spreadsheets in GB (unless you want to have the
spreadsheet work if exported to excel), but having the capability to
execute VBA macros in the spreadsheet is useful.

>  Again, what's wrong with VDKBuilder? It's at 30% of Microsoft Visual C++ 
> power minus the templates wizards. Yell to your hearts content about 
> Microsoft, Visual C++ is a still one the best integrated environments.

Well, the form builder is pretty much useless for straight gtk or gnome
programming, and most developers already have a favourite editor.

> 
> H. Aurag
> 

James.

-- 
Email: james@daa.com.au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/