[Openmcl-devel] prompt-for-file (embarrassing question)

[Jānis Džeriņš]

Paul Krueger <plkrueger at comcast.net> writes:

> The problem with any platform-agnostic GUI development API (CLIM,
> TCL/TK, X11, Qt, etc.) is that they almost never support the latest
> and greatest features of the major platforms. What you develop using
> them just never looks or feels quite right to a native user.

The concept "native user" is not very important nowadays.  And with the
onslaught of WebKit based UIs its importance is diminishing.

People want to use applications.  Getting used to an unusual but
empowering interface is no big deal.  Take Emacs (or Vi/Vim for that
matter) as an example.

> And since those platforms are constantly moving targets, keeping up
> with the changes is a herculean task that nobody will maintain for
> very long. You’d need a large, committed support community to have a
> chance and to the best of my knowledge that just hasn't ever developed
> in the any community, much less in the CL community.

Yes, vendors want their vendor lock-in.  Us developers want to stay away
from it.  We're not the only ones struggling with this.  Here is a link
to an article on this same topic:

  http://blog.johnnovak.net/2016/05/29/cross-platform-gui-trainwreck-2016-edition/

You might notice the interfaces of the mentioned applications do not
exactly look "native".

Another high-profile professional application I know of that is
cross-platform is Ableton Live.  And it uses QT (as far as I know), but
instead of trying the interface to feel "native" it tries to make it
feel "empowering".

The bottom line I guess is that we should take the good parts of CLIM,
forget about the "native" gadgets, and use low-level drawing APIs
(e.g., OpenGL, Vulcan, Metal) to enable programmers to create GUIs that
make sense for the problem at hand.

My 2 cents,
-- 
Jānis Džeriņš