Re: [wxperl-users] your wxGlade wishlist

[Eric W. <scr...@gm...>]

# from Johan Vromans
# on Saturday 17 March 2007 04:59 am:

>> Next, I've heard "I want a good, free GUI rad tool" before, and to
>> be honest, I have no interest in that sort of thing or that line of
>> discussion and thus no intention to do anything about it.
>
>I think this is an very unfortunate attitude.

What!?  I'm trying to be pragmatic here.  Code generation doesn't work, 
so I don't think it is worth discussing.

I only intended that to set the topic as "not wxglade."  If you want to 
use it, fine.  I prefer to write clean, concise code rather than wade 
through piles of generated muck.

>As many people here know, I'm a fan of wxGlade. wxGlade provides a
>great help in setting up user interfaces and generates good Perl code.
>Many of the things that bother you when using wxPerl do not bother me,
>since they're part of automatically generated code that I don't have
>to maintain. I even don't care to look at this code except for
>educational purposes.

Thanks.  Now to untrim the important bit of that paragraph:

>>Sorry, wrong thread.  If someone has an adequately smalltalkish
>>inspiration for wedding the tool to the code, it might be applicable.
>>Otherwise, no. 

I'm not saying "it can't be done" or "I won't allow it."  Rather, THIS 
IS NOT SMALLTALK!  No matter what wxglade or other tool does, it still 
has to generate a text file, which is an all-or-nothing operation.  
Even with the "start" and "end" markers, you're left with a blob of 
code that can't be changed in your editor.  It's a one-way street, 
which means the workflow is perverted into something like "make, then 
edit."  Until a gui tool can deal with *incoming* changes to the code, 
we're not even close to solving this.  Now, make the tool and the 
editor communicate via a mechanism that doesn't involve conflicting 
overwrites on one file.  Ok?  See why we're in the wrong environment to 
enable this sort of thing?  You might be fine with the way it works, 
but it is so far from optimal that I see it as having started from a 
*completely* wrong set of assumptions.

It doesn't count as wheel-reinvention if the current wheel won't roll.

--Eric
-- 
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
--George Santayana
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