[REBOL] Re: My first script and an introduction
From: greggirwin:mindspring at: 5-Jul-2004 11:31
GML> My name is Glenn M. Lewis, and I'm a language junkie. :-)
Hi Glenn!
Welcome to the list!
GML> Actually, I'm looking for a language that would assist in making it easier
GML> to write an application where the GUI stays responsive even when the
GML> underlying 'engines' might be working away at some large CPU-intensive task.
GML> Specifically, I write EDA CAD tools for a living at a major chip manufacturing
GML> company.
This is often an architectural thing. If you put a bunch of code in
the action/event-handler for a face/control, it may halt UI event
processing while it works. This affects many GUI tools. If you need
things to stay responsive, the best way I've found is to break up the
large tasks into little chunks and have an internal FSM/event-queue
system that is used to dispatch UI events and process chunks when
there's nothing else going on. Depending on what you're doing, you may
be able to spawn the big tasks as separate processes or use threads
(more complexity that way though). REBOL doesn't currently support
threads, but you could put that logic in a DLL that allows you to use
them.
GML> Another one of my dilemmas, along with the responsive GUI, is that
GML> the language I choose must be able to create full-featured GUIs with all
GML> modern GUI features like dockable windows, high-level widgets, and OpenGL
GML> support. I'm having trouble finding something that meets all these needs.
That can be tough. The more features you need, the larger and more
complex the tools become. Cal Dixon and Cyphre have built demos
integrating OpenGL with REBOL; Cyphre, Max, Anton, Brett, Etienne, and
others have built some higher level widgets than what VID provides
(tree lists, table/grid, menu, tab-panels, etc.). I did a little
experiment with layouts that stay docked together, so that's doable as
well.
REBOL doesn't have a large set of support tools for building bigger
applications at this point--not really it's main goal--but it can
certainly be done. The foundation it provides is very flexible, so
it's just a question of whether the tools it does provide are enough
for you to build on, or if you want a tool that already has everything
you need in it. Of the tools you listed, I don't know that any of them
will.
Best of luck, and happy REBOLing!
-- Gregg
