Re: RADiola, a GTK RAD tool

[Roland Koebler <rk-list koebler com>]

hi,

after I read a bit of your documentation-pdf, I have some annotations:

pdf> - No knowledgement of a programming language is needed.
pdf>   Applications are completely created in a graphical manner.
I think this is only possible for very simple applications. for more complex
applications you would need very many "graphical items" - and this might
be hard to handle... (and inefficient to create - you would need thousands of
mouse-clicks)

pdf> - Responses to events happened in the applications are set with the
pdf>   use of very simple fluxograms (flowcharts)
I personally never liked flowcharts for programming. from the example in your
documentation (page 12):
  +-------------------+
  | a = x + y / (z-7) |
  +-------------------+
            |
  ____----^^^^^----____      .-.
 < if a > z AND a < 10 >----+ a + 
  ^^^^----_____----^^^^      ^-^
            |
  .-------------------.
  |     while a < 10  |
  |-------------------|
  |         |         |
  |   +-----------+   |
  |   + a = a + 1 +   |
  |   +-----------+   |
  |         |         |

clicking all those things together (+ defining the variables by mouse-clicking)
isn't quite efficient.

Instead of clicking together the above flowchart-diagram, I think the following
is much cleaner, more efficient to type, faster to edit/modify/move/cut-and-
paste/..., faster to understand etc.:

def f(x,y,z):
  a = x+y / (z-7)
  if a > z and a < 10:
    return a
  while a < 10:
    a=a+1
  return a

it's even more readable with colored syntax-highlighting. and the above
is already valid python-code!

but ok, if you like flowcharts: I think I've already seen such
flowchart->code-generators (but they do not name them "flowcharts", but maybe
UML or so). maybe you could use them.

pdf> There are some approaches to widget placement according to each
pdf> programming language or graphical toolkit. Most of them use "fixed
pdf> positions":
yes, unfortunately.
the gtk-containers are _much_ better in my opinion. you do not need to care
about the exact position, alignment, resize-behavoir, etc. of the widgets.
the result looks much better with much less effort. =)
and the whole container-concept in gtk is _very_ good. I didn't see anything
like this in other toolkits. 
in other toolkits, it sometimes even isn't possible to have an image in a
button. in gtk, you can put _anything_ in a button, i.e. a table with 10
images, 5 labels, a treeview bars and much more (if you like to *g*).

I would strongly recommend them ;).

On 16-Jul-2006 15:38:29, Fabricio Rocha wrote:
>       Thanks, Santhosh. In reply, there are some fundamental differences:
>       - While Glade and Gazpacho are UI-builders, RADiola aims to be an 
> application builder. This includes variables and subroutines, among 
> other things.
In my opinion, an "application builder" basically is a gui-builider with a
sort of integrated "guided sourcecode-editor". not much more.

>       - Glade and Gazpacho are highly tied to GTK, and so are their users. 
> RADiola is being made with GTK, but the user-created applications might 
> adopt any other toolkit and various programming languages.
>       - Users of those and other GUI builders still have to dominate a 
> programming language and an API for creating an application, while 
> RADiola will try to abstract all this "coding stuff" as much as possible.
oh, you want to build a toolkit-independent, language-independent
super-mega-application-building-tool ?

and together with:
On 14-Jul-2006 04:51:09, Fabricio Rocha wrote:
> The (sad) reality is that I am only a hobbyist programmer (in fact 
> I'm a TV reporter in the Politics area!), with little GTK experience, 
> and still had no time for writing more than a few lines of code.
I would recommend you to start a bit "lower". otherwise I guess your
project would never get running...

what I would suggest:
- start small.
  you can extend the project later.
- stick to 1 toolkit (gtk) and 1 programming language (python).
  as soon as this is running, you may add more toolkits/languages.
- use python. python is easy to learn, and has a very clean syntax.
  especially less experienced programmers get faster results, and
  you don't have to worry about all these low-level-details like in C.
- take an existing gui-builder - so you do not need to write your own.
  there are i.e. glade,glade-3 and gazpacho. AFAIK at least one of them is
  written in python (see also: http://glade.gnome.org/todo.html
  http://gruppy.sicem.biz/ and http://gazpacho.sicem.biz/ )
- extend this gui-builder i.e. with an additional sourcecode-edit-window.
- as soon as this is running, you can add further functionality. like
  sourcecode-generating wizards, variable-definition-by-mouse-click, or
  the flowchart-designer.

just my 0.02 cents...

regards,
Roland