Museum

[newdep]

Hello Lutz,



Is it correct that the very prime NewLisp version for windows had windows API calls with Windows GUI?  If yes im currious to see those.



Currently you have only the latest ersion of newlisp for download available,

is it perhpas an option to create a new Wiki section called "Museum" ? Where

the older previous versions are stored (stable versions) for download?





Regards, Norman

[Lutz]

I don't have enough space for this but when newLISP started as a GPL version all releases (no develpment versions) are on Sourceforge starting with version 6.3 -> http://sourceforge.net/projects/newlisp/">http://sourceforge.net/projects/newlisp/



The windows GUI version had a nice API and programming GUIs and graphices was much nicer than with the current newLISP-tk frontend where you have to learn Tcl/TK (althought not much of it).



Maintaining is was pretty horrible, the Win32 SDK API is very unconsistend, grown out of proportions and a pain to use. Putting a layer on it hiding all these inconsistencies was a permanent pain; I finally decided to drop Win32 support completely until Steve (adamss3) me convinced, that it was a bad decisionnd helped porting back to Win32.



Today I think GTK-server would be a better way to go or even Win32-Server from the same folks (hint, hint, hint ;) )



Lutz

[eddier]

The Windows GUI stuff on the old newLISP was one of the easiest to use.



Another easy to use GUI platform was wxPython. wxPerl  also uses the wxWidget set.  If you ever decide to make a cross platform GUI again, maybe try wxWidgets (used to be wxWindows). Only thing is that it might be large???



Eddie

[adamss3]

Is there a URL for the Win32 Server?  Is this a single EXE that we can use to make GUIs?

[eddier]

The Windows GUI stuff on the old newLISP was one of the easiest to use.



Another easy to use GUI platform was wxPython. wxPerl  also uses the wxWidget set.  If you ever decide to make a cross platform GUI again, maybe try wxWidgets (used to be wxWindows). Only thing is that it might be large???



Eddie

[adamss3]

The Windows GUI version of newLISP was very good.  You had the combined power of newLISP, while having a saner interface to the underlying Win32 API.  In many ways, it was the best of both worlds.

[Lutz]

The Win32-Server was a joke/hint to Peter/pjot from http://gtk-server.org">http://gtk-server.org to roll smething similar for Win32. What gtk-server basically does is maintaining the call back loop for GTK, a Win32-server could do the same thing maintaining the WinMain callback loop.



Sometimes I also crave for a newLISP GUI API similar to the old one. Its just a lot of work!  Back then I had developed that GUI layer for RuleTalk a Prolog dialect I developed in 90/91. I basically just dropped it into newLISP and then developed it further from there.



I always hoped somebody would do a new newLISP GUI on top of the current tcl/tk interface. But perhaps GTK or wxWindows would be a more modern approach. Whatever it is it should be Open Source and portable to other platforms.



It also should live in an extra file. The nice thing about newLISP-tk is, that the frontend can live on an entirely different computer. I think GTK-Server could do the same?



Lutz

[newdep]

I let peter talk about gtk-server ;-)



Actualy I like the way of having independent GUI control too, still its a lot

of porting and coding to get it right. Currenlty i have here an nice middle-ware parcer for newlisp and gtk-server, makes the gtk calls much nicer from newlisp.



Secondly calling newlisp from Programs that have a GUI is also nice, still

im unable to build an .so lib under linux so i cant test it...:-)

[Lutz]

libnewlisb.so is on my todo list



Lutz

[newdep]

It was a hint :)

[newdep]

this seems to be and older project for gtk 1.2 perhpas nice to have a look at the code.. http://sourceforge.net/projects/rep-gtk/">http://sourceforge.net/projects/rep-gtk/

[Lutz]

I am (too) easy ...



Lutz



ps: I mean libnewlisp.so

[pjot]

Hint taken! ;-)



I actually started to program the GTK-server because I ran into the same trouble as Lutz - too much work. Some time ago I programmed a GTK-binding for Scriptbasic, but this was an extremely time-consuming process. Also a tedious and boring task, since I had to implement each GTK call one-by-one. Finally, I was bound to 1 programming language (Scriptbasic), which by itself was not perfect to fill my needs (newlisp is much, much closer).



After some study I created a prototype of the GTK-server which was able to communicate by STDIN. Only KSH and AWK were supported. The project got bigger and bigger, now supporting Win32, three types of communication interfaces and 15 languages.



The nice thing of the GTK-server concept is, that the boring and tedious task is left to the user: all individual GTK calls have to be described in an external configfile, saving me from a lot of work. Besides, I do not have to hack somebody else's sourcecode to hook up new GUI statements.



But as a passionate Unix/Linux user, I am not very interested in maintaining a Win32 API server similar to the GTK-server... sorry. Instead I use my Win32 port of the GTK-server. Also GTK2.x for Windows has become quite stable now, and has a genuine InstallShield. With the WIMP option (included in the installer) the GTK-widgets look almost the same as the original Windows widgets. Finally, GUI programs for Unix/Linux using the GTK-server run without any code change on Windows as well.



Peter

[Lutz]

GTK may definetly be the way to go, I think it is also available on the Mac. The bindings created for newLISP would be usable on all other platforms as well. There is also a large community of programmers familiar with the GTK API, may be even more than Tcl/Tk although the latter has been around for a long time. I believe Maurizio started doing a GUI API  in newLISP-tk, but I am not sure.



One way to get people into GTK-server + newLISP, would be to rewrite the newLISP GUI frontend which is currently in tcl/tk in newLISP + GTK-server. I just don't find the time with so many other items on my newLISP list.



Good to hear that GTK 2.x for windows is now quite stable, I remember you had a different view some time ago.



Lutz

[newdep]

some serious Mutliplatvorm options:



Implants: WxWindows - GTK -QT



Independents: Gtk-server / Newlisp-TK



Rewrites: WxPerl , Gtk-PHP,  Gtk-FreePascal





More idea's ?