[Openmcl-devel] Whither easygui?

[Arthur W Cater]

I submitted extensive changes to easygui back in March, I think
I'm not the original author and I don't know who is.
I have done almost no more development since then, but I suppose I ought to submit
the little more there is ...

There were several justified criticisms that (embarrassed squirm) I never properly replied to.
- The API exports some cocoa-specific things it ought not to
- The API should be platform agnostic, even if Cocoa is (for now) the only platform
- Some (unspecified) features appeared to one critic to be crude responses to a specific need;
  I can guess what some of them are

I am not happy with the need for keyword arguments to mouse-down and friends.
There's a bug that bites me occasionally, to do with a SLOT-VECTOR not having enough
slots when #/isFlipped asks: I keep meaning to throw some more time at understanding
that one, it is intermittent and damned annoying! I suspect it is a threading issue.

I do use it. I would welcome assistance, or indeed coup! Extending what was there when I
began was indeed a response to a specific need, I wanted to port my MCL-based work-
in-progress Go-playing app to CCL. I don't think of myself as a developer of GUI toolkits.

I find the idea of a platform-independent toolkit, such as Alexander Repenning is working on
if I understand correctly, very appealing. Probably easygui could be platform-independent
too, but I for one am not going to work on making it so. I know virtually nothing about other
platforms, and not enough about Cocoa.

I'm happy to engage in discussions of how easygui might be improved, and of what it
currently does, with anyone interested in using extending or improving it.

Arthur

----- Original Message -----
From: Ron Garret <ron at awun.net>
Date: Saturday, June 27, 2009 8:36 pm
Subject: [Openmcl-devel] Whither easygui?
To: Openmcl-devel Devel <openmcl-devel at clozure.com>

> What is the current state of easygui?  Is it stable (at 
> least at the  
> API level)? Is it under active development?  If so, by 
> whom?  Do they  
> need help?  Is anyone using it?  If so, how is it 
> working for you?
> 
> The reason I'm asking is because I'm kind of transitioning away 
> from  
> noodling-around mode and into serious development mode.  
> Right now  
> I've got my own cocoa utilities that I wrote mostly as an 
> exercise.   
> But I don't want to use them for real work if there's a 
> better  
> alternative.
> 
> rg
> 
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