Re: GUI builders, good or bad?

[eserte]

Usually GUI builders produce bad source code, and even the produced GUI layout is not useable for most applications. Why? Most GUI builders only allow pixel exact layout, and not relative layout. In Tk terms, the layout code produced is using the "place" geometry manager, and not the "pack" or "grid" geometry managers. This works fine if all application users have the same font and screen settings, and if internationalization is not needed, but fails miserably if this is not the case.

Last time I looked at Prima the GUI builder was solving the problem by ignoring the user's font setting (as for example set by .Xdefaults on an X11 system), but forcing it's own fonts, resulting in ugly scaled fonts on my system.

[Courage]

VTCL allows 3 different geometry managers, namely grid, place and pack. Don't use placer if you don't want to.
SpecTix/SpecTcl use grid only.

I have very few experience about Java's GUI designer, but all of them that I had chance to try used packer and placer as geometry managers, namely I tried Sun's Forte and Borland's JBuilder.

That said, "place" is not the only one that is actively used by GUI designers..

I have no experience what produces Prima though.

Courage, the Cowardly Dog

[hardburn]

The Glade builder for Gnome uses grid layouts by default. You can place a pixel-by-pixel layout if you want, though. It has been a while since I've used it, and I don't remember anything about the quality of code.

[Anonymous Monk]

This is why you use libglade and it's XML features. It produces the GUI as a description file that any program language can read, thus seperating the GUI definition and the code. As a result the code can work with multiple GUI definitions and you can change the GUI without changing the code. Python GTK has an excellent module for libglade. I don't know if Perl has one or not -- let me know if it does, I like Perl better. --MPD

[hardburn]

I don't know if Perl has one or not -- let me know if it does

It does.