[paragui-users] translation to C ideas...

[Teunis Peters]

Well I knew I said I wouldn't post about progress but it's been real quiet
here so why not.

As it stands, still converting basic types.  There's a lot of difference
in how C handles data from C++ - stdc++ and sigc++ dependencies being the
most extreme.  Funny thing is, sigc++ is much easier to convert...

Anyways, for those wondering about C class functions, I've found another
good source - gtk/glib/...  I'm not planning on using any of these libs as
it's kind of a big set of dependencies (that and I want -no- X
requirements), but I am planning plugins to add support...

Strings will be ... different.  Hopefully it should look nice.  I'm adding
attributes (like different fonts, colours and other special effects) to
strings.

I'm not sure what else will be different yet.  But losing std::string,
std::vector and std::map will make a bunch of things trickier.  I miss
std:string the most actually.

No as yet there's nothing much to show.  I've had a nasty couple of weeks
(with a short nice break camping in central BC with a bunch of SCA folk :)
so I haven't had as much done as I want.  Anyways, still writing the
initial set of headers.  Implementation's not a problem - just redesign at
this point.

I am planning support for other languages - hopefully without affecting
current operations too much.
I am planning a widget registry.  Actually this will simplify getting a
port to C working :)
Expect videodrivers to be replacable.  The default (std SDL) should be
fine for most purposes though.
Expect huge changes in how fonts are handled.  Mostly because this is one
of the areas paragui falls down on - well somewhat.  Actually ParaGUI's
font support's not bad but it's not very modular (and breaks the
videodriver subsystem I wrote).
and *heh* expect to be able to have multiple languages displayed
simultaneously.  That's one of my requirements - I need an editor capable
of working in any number of languages - including ones I'm still studying,
as well as with mathematical formulae.  Not even emacs can do this one
properly.

Oh - I'm still thinking about animation-specific widgets, multimedia
widgets and 3D-specific widgets.  Not sure of these yet but they won't be
in the core.

Strangely enough it'll still be paragui - well, more or less.  It's a fun
project.  Again, don't know when there'll be anything to show though.

I'm mainly doing this because:
- it's fun.  (why not? :)
- there's a shortage of good opengl GUI's for games...  or other purposes
- there's a shortage of multilingual-capable GUIs for SDL...
- ParaGUI comes the closest to what I need from a GUI from all my
searching (and writing) for the last 12+ years...  Interface design is my
big weakness I'm best at making existing designs work in new conditions...

I'm not sure as yet how I can broadcast this yet as well.  I don't want it
to be another paragui CVS branch - it's different enough it would mess
things up.  Might post it on my own server though.

G'day, eh? :)
        - Teunis

PS: I'm posting this because I'm kind of hoping for feedback on some of my
ideas in here.  The few here that ARE backportable to paragui are
probably already in the opengl branch *grin*