[LAD] Looking for an introduction to rt programming with a gui

[torbenh]

On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 06:00:05PM +0200, Olivier Guilyardi wrote:
> On 05/24/2010 01:47 PM, torbenh wrote:
> > On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 12:36:43PM +0200, Olivier Guilyardi wrote:

> >>>> But maybe that, with experience and methodology, one can get as productive in C
> >>>> as in C++? I suppose the guys at Gnome would agree with that..
> >>> there is a reason why gob2 and vala emerged. 
> >>> writing a GObject in C is a pretty big PITA.
> >> Indeed, and that's why I don't use Vala. To make any real use of it, you need to
> >> write GObjects wrappers for the libraries or low level C/C++ routines that you
> >> need, before you can bind them into Vala.
> > 
> > hmm... i actually view it from the other side.
> > if i want to derive from GtkWidget or somthing this is a huge PITA in C.
> > in vala this is easy and streight forward. and the vala code compiles to C
> > so i can go ahead and use my vala widget from my C code.
> 
> I understand that you use Vala solely as a GObject generator.. I didn't think
> about this actually. I was talking about using Vala as the main language, or at
> least the whole GUI part, and call native code from Vala through bindings.

i actually dont use vala.
i still got some gob2 baggage in the galan codebase.
and here it would probably make sense to convert that to vala.
but i am not really working on galan anymore.

> 
> > you dont need to write GObject wrappers. but vala can generate bindings
> > automatically through GObject introspection.
> 
> Yes I know about this, but if you need bindings for your low level stuff (jack,
> etc..) or for a library for which the bindings do not exist, then you need to
> write a GObject wrapper in C for this introspection to take place.

no. you can write a vapi file manually.
but i still find maintaining some wrappers annoying.
if the stuff isnt supposed to be a library and doesnt need to be used
from other language i guess i just stay do it all in c++ 


> 
> But using Vala to generate the wrapper skeleton could be the key.. I didn't
> think about this actually.
> 
> [...]
> 
> >> Nevertheless, Vala looks promising. But I don't like the GObject model. I made
> >> my own OO constructs in C with inheritance and such, but if you want the whole
> >> thing, with interfaces etc.., I think that C just isn't the way to go.
> > 
> > your own OO constructs dont really help you when you want to derive from a GObject.
> > and thats the whole point, i think.
> 
> Yes, but my constructs are very simple and readable to me :p They were never
> meant to be coupled with GObject, they bring some OO features I need, and it's
> just pure C, no code generation, etc.. Eg:
> http://jackbeat.samalyse.org/browser/trunk/src/stream

yeah. as long as its just for the backend, its nice like this.
but my main point is that when implementing some custom widgets i want
to inherit from the closest GtkWidget and just refine it.

so that would be either gtkmm or pygtk


> 
> > gtkmm makes deriving easy. but the resulting object cant be wrapped with pygtk
> > or other stuff. you lock yourself into the c++ domain.
> > or write your own wrappers.
> 
> If using Python and C/C++ (a great couple by the way), they I think the GUI part
> should be written in Python anyway.

well.. i am a bit annoyed of pythons GIL currently. because it makes
calling python callbacks from other C threads a bit annoying.
still pygtk always pulls me back to using python :)

> 
> >>> its probably possible to create the boilerplate out of some kind of
> >>> template. 
> >>> but i am not aware of some rails/paster like framework to create this
> >>> boilerplate with a single command.
> >> Actually, I'm currently thinking about some very clever IDE and intellisense
> >> features for C. When I look at this Eclipse IDE, and all that it understands,
> >> and thus automatically proposes, I think that similar aids could really be
> >> useful in C.
> > 
> > hmm... when it comes to C i dont miss anything from vim. its pretty much smart enough.
> > c++ is another story. since the tags system isnt smart enought to
> > resolve x->write() to the right write() method of all those classes that support that interface.
> 
> I've been using the tags system for C, then I stopped using it, tried again,
> etc.. I'm not very confident with the exuberant thing and the like. I once tried
> some vim intellisense system, I think that one sort of worked, but Googl'ing
> about that it looks like it gained maturity:
> http://insenvim.sourceforge.net/
> 
> I think that some day I need to seat and work a couple of days on optimizing my
> Vim setup. Maybe even learn the scripting part..

hmm... completionwise i am pretty happy with the normal completion.
what i basically need is jumping to a tag working with c++
(without :ts for selecting the right one if that method name was
ambiguous)

hmmm... i will have a look at omnicomplete
maybe it contains the necessary logic to achieve this.

> 
> > if your still into vim you might want to have a look at http://eclim.org/
> > thats pretty awesome :)
> 
> I have to try this, especially the headless mode, thank you :-)
> 
> However, it's not that I really like the Eclipse Java machinery. But I'm
> currently forced to use it, and I have to witness that source refactoring for
> function, class renaming, and a couple of other features are awesome.
> 
> I'll give a try to Eclim to see what it has to offer in this regard.

it makes most of eclipses awesomeness accessible.
while retaining the awesomeness of vim.

i only tried it with java though. would be interesting how well it works
with C.

-- 
torben Hohn