Whoosh wrote:
If I were to use GUIs myself I think I would write my own one, that way I would ensure portability. If you use an external one then the problem is that 5 years down the line everyone will have abandoned that path, and you will be stuck with complicated + interesting + unusable source code.
Whereas you are stuck with further developing your own one. That works if you're Stefan Stuntz, whose only concern is that of developing a toolkit for others to use, but as you said yourself, only 5 percent of a program should be the interface, and how do you manage that with a fairly complex interface, if you have to incorporate your entire private GUI toolkit into your program.
You will even have to think about portability of your own toolkit. You advocate dropping the bitplane system. Well, let's say that your private toolkit made use of that. Now you will have to update your toolkit to run on chunky screens, whereas if you had used GadTools, ClassAct or MUI, it would run just as fine without knowing.
The last few weeks, I've been running Betascan, and the programmer uses his own private OO toolkit. Well, good for him. Bad for me. It tries to fit in, but there's only so much you can do to ensure that your toolkit will be really system friendly. Basically, it mimics a plain grey OS 3.0 interface, using the standard grey colour, Topaz 8 as its screen font, and so on. Well, I'm sorry, but I stopped using Topaz 8 as my system font in 1994, and I don't feel like making its acquaintance anew, especially not on a screen with square pixels. It also looks like it uses the ASL requester, only it doesn't. It just mimics Intuition, but since it isn't Intuition, it doesn't fit in with any system which has had its prefs changed, or its system upgraded. Betascan's reimplementation of the ASL requester doesn't adhere to the standard shortcut keys, doesn't have the same menu features, and will in no way behave the way you expect after having used ASLPrefs.
If you adhere to standards, you will not alienate users. And if you use external toolkits, your program will often be upgraded along with the toolkits. For example, a program released in 1992 will inherit all the new features of the latest ASL library, whereas your own implementation will forever be frozen in the 1992 stage.
People complain about progs that use their own GUI, I say smart move! Your prog will port everywhere.
Port everywhere, fit in nowhere. What a useless concept.
People keep sobbing for standardisation of interface, I have no sympathy for you!: the "standardised approach" of today is in a rubbish dump tomorrow.
Like everything else, you mean?
Mind you, some standards do persist. Standard keyboard shortcuts have been the same ever since Apple and Commodore first defined them. Why, the QWERTY keyboard is an even older standard (which, however, deserves to end up in the dump ;-). However, are you saying that your own standard ensures longevity surpassing that of the OS/toolkit developers? Even though GadTools is deprecated, it still works, on every Amiga system in existence.
I remember once writing some shareware prog, and someone criticised my docs saying they should be more standardised, they should be in amigaguide. Well amigaguide wonderful though it is never took off.
What world or year are you from? AmigaGuide is very much the standard documentation format, and used by most software packages with more than one K of documentation.
OS2.0 with its gray wb was someones bright idea of standardisation, standardisation is so mind numbingly boring. Please dont ask for this, who is going to standardise, what qualifies them to do it, please dont even think about it. Standardise the OS by all means but not the interface.
OS2 with its gray WB, and the UI guidelines, made Amiga apps more usable, since programmers could concentrate on programming, instead of reinventing the GUI wheel and confusing the user. It was a win-win deal for all sides.
You say OSes should be standardised, but not the GUI. Well, AmigaOS is a GUI OS, and has always been one. You standardise the OS, you standardise the GUI. And GUIs are, despite what you might think, not the only parts of an OS which are upgraded or left behind. Only, when you use the standard GUI, you leave the updating to someone else, and hopefully in a way which won't break your program.
