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Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #307]

Wed, 07 December 2005 21:02

fudadmin
Messages: 1321
Registered: November 2005
Location: Kaunas, Lithuania

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biggest drawback of U++[ 38 votes ]
1.	Articles & Reviews	3 / 8%
2.	Features	2 / 5%
3.	Lack of documentation	33 / 87%

It would be good to have this poll in "%" but I don't know howto...
so, please write your "%"...
Are there any other reasons? Smile

[Updated on: Wed, 07 December 2005 21:11]

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #538 is a reply to message #307]

Sun, 08 January 2006 16:29

Garry
Messages: 7
Registered: November 2005

Promising Member

Personally I think the best way to improve "popularity" is what's happening now - this forum.

Even without reams of documentation, a good forum is what's needed to help out newbies, like myself. I've followed the progress of UPP for quite some time, but it's only now since the forum got up and running, that I've gotten a bit more confidence in sticking more time and effort into doing something with U++. The original mailing list was far too daunting to try and look for information. Keep up the good work here.

Magazine articles would certainly also raise the profile of the project too. It's unusual to see such a powerful and well developed tool have such a low media impact. It's nearly impossible to find any information out there on the web except for download sites which always feature the same description of the project.

Anyway, hopefully the download figures are indicating a trend in the right direction.

Garry

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #539 is a reply to message #538]

Sun, 08 January 2006 16:51

fudadmin
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Garry wrote on Sun, 08 January 2006 10:29

Thank you for your encouraging words!

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2764 is a reply to message #307]

Tue, 25 April 2006 05:41

prof
Messages: 7
Registered: April 2006

Promising Member

I would also consider the following:

- stability (Is it useable or buggy? Is it possible to build stable real world applications using it?)
- maturity (Are there many upp-based real world applications besides TheIDE? Is it used for years to develop commercial products? Is it likely that my application will still compile with future versions of upp? Is Assist++ parser good enough?)
- support (Is Upp actively maintained? Is upp community alive?)
- performance and effectivity (size of binaries, memory and cpu usage, ease of use, learning curve)
- look and feel
- interoperability, compatibility and portability (Is it easy to migrate from VC/boost.build/autotools/whatever to TheIDE and package system? Is it possible to build upp packages from boost build/msvc ide/ant/whatever?)
- scalability/useablity for large projects (Does it take ages to open Assist++ completion dialogs in large projects? Is version control/collaborative work supported?)

Etc etc... Well, I don't know yet...

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2766 is a reply to message #307]

Tue, 25 April 2006 09:13

riri
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Registered: February 2006
Location: France

Promising Member

Hi

I agree with prof at least for one term: look&feel.
Upp is designed to be portable, but has a Windows look&feel. I know this will be improved in the future, but for now, I beleave this's one of the reasons to make Ultimate++ unpopular.

Another reason could be it's particular design (like the foundations of NTL). Even if it seems to be a pleasure for certain persons, it way be a non sense for others ?

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2768 is a reply to message #2766]

Tue, 25 April 2006 09:29

fudadmin
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riri wrote on Tue, 25 April 2006 08:13

Look&feel is the most uninmportant thing. The most commercial programs are for Windows. Linux with X.org is just for kids at its current state.

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2769 is a reply to message #2768]

Tue, 25 April 2006 09:32

mirek
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Registered: November 2005

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fudadmin wrote on Tue, 25 April 2006 03:29

riri wrote on Tue, 25 April 2006 08:13

Look&feel is the most uninmportant thing. The most commercial programs are for Windows. Linux with X.org is just for kids at its current state.

Bah, you have just tried the wrong distro Wink

We will also need look&feel adjustments on Win too (think Vista if not theming...)

Mirek

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2770 is a reply to message #2768]

Tue, 25 April 2006 09:43

riri
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Location: France

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fudadmin wrote on Tue, 25 April 2006 09:29

Look&feel is the most uninmportant thing.

Really ?
u++ implements a GUI, so for me Look&Feel is important for people.

Quote:

The most commercial programs are for Windows.

Must have commercial ambitions to be proud of using u++ ?

Quote:

Linux with X.org is just for kids at its current state.

I've not tried really u++ under GNU/Linux so I can't tell.

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2772 is a reply to message #2768]

Tue, 25 April 2006 09:50

mirek
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Registered: November 2005

Ultimate Member

fudadmin wrote on Tue, 25 April 2006 03:29

The most commercial programs are for Windows.

BTW, just a sidenote, things seem to be changing slowly for our bussines there. We already maintain a couple of linux apps now for our customers. And it even seems that one of my municipal agendas system will at least partly trash Windows at the end of year and replace with Linux - that would mean I will have to support Linux version soon.

Mirek

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2781 is a reply to message #2770]

Tue, 25 April 2006 10:57

fudadmin
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riri wrote on Tue, 25 April 2006 08:43

Quote:

The most commercial programs are for Windows.

Must have commercial ambitions to be proud of using u++ ?

Wrong formulation of the question which shows wrong understanding of the situation.
I want, at least, u++ users (and creators) not to be ashamed and ridiculed (which is a normal stage of every inovation...) because of using it...
And, I'm very sure, it's in everyone's interests to make u++ better and more popular.
Because - unfortunately - pshycological labeling prevails at this stage of humans development. That's why police, army and priests etc. wear uniforms... That's why most people choose not the better things but "more popular".
You need to reach some critical point when mass and popularity becomes "self expanding". Endless story of "The King's dead! Long live the King!..."

[Updated on: Tue, 25 April 2006 10:57]

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2783 is a reply to message #2772]

Tue, 25 April 2006 11:03

riri
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Registered: February 2006
Location: France

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luzr wrote on Tue, 25 April 2006 09:50

... - that would mean I will have to support Linux version soon.

What a good news for Linux users Wink

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2831 is a reply to message #307]

Thu, 27 April 2006 09:29

pivica
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Registered: November 2005
Location: Belgrade, Serbia

Member

Quote:

... - that would mean I will have to support Linux version soon.

finally

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2836 is a reply to message #2831]

Thu, 27 April 2006 21:07

prof
Messages: 7
Registered: April 2006

Promising Member

It seems to me that the whole talk was focused just on "GUI toolkit" part of upp, and everybody left TheIDE and build system used by UPP without attention they deserve.

By "look and feel" I didn't mean the widgets - I meant TheIDE in comparison to VS IDE, upp build system in comparison to MCVC solutions, Boost.Build, Perforce Jam, makefiles, autotools etc.

I'm not a GUI developer. 90% of my needs for UI are satisfied by printf() call. The toolkit is good, but it isn't revolutionary. There are such things like Mozilla XUL/XRE and Tk. But the idea of packages impressed me. Finally there is a chance for source tree to become ordered. Finally, someone tried to introduce "modular concepts to C++ programming" (a quote from upp home page).

Talking about the widgets, they look ugly for me. I wouldn't use them in a software product I want to sell to plain home or corporate users. Of course, if I just want a quick and dirty UI, or if I make a prog for one customer for his personal use, it's ok. The widgets resemble early linux desktops and win16 (especially when I try to open a file). I hope that themes will fix this issue, and the UI will look more beautiful. Like Firefox, like Visual Studio, like Office.

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2839 is a reply to message #2836]

Thu, 27 April 2006 21:17

mirek
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Registered: November 2005

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prof wrote on Thu, 27 April 2006 15:07

Talking about the widgets, they look ugly for me.

Hm, are you linux user or XP?

I think that look is now pretty damned close to XP Luna... (or Win2K in second variation).

Mirek

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2842 is a reply to message #2836]

Thu, 27 April 2006 21:59

forlano
Messages: 1202
Registered: March 2006
Location: Italy

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prof wrote on Thu, 27 April 2006 21:07

Talking about the widgets, they look ugly for me.

I strongly disagree with you. Some widget could be improved, but their general appearance is excellent. Please have a look at this page , http://free-soft.org/guitool/ , to see what there is around. I've seen all of them and U++ has one of the best set of widgets.

Luigi

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2843 is a reply to message #2839]

Thu, 27 April 2006 22:19

prof
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Registered: April 2006

Promising Member

I'm XP user and I use "windows classic" theme. I think that these look better than TheIDE. Maybe, it's just due to colorful icons and fancy toolbar grips I used to?

http://strangers.dimid.kiev.ua/fancy/fancy_perforce.png

http://strangers.dimid.kiev.ua/fancy/fancy_vs2005.png

http://strangers.dimid.kiev.ua/fancy/fancy_xsetup.png

http://strangers.dimid.kiev.ua/fancy/fancy_nero.png

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2844 is a reply to message #2843]

Thu, 27 April 2006 22:56

unodgs
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prof wrote on Thu, 27 April 2006 16:19

I'm XP user and I use "windows classic" theme. I think that these look better than TheIDE. Maybe, it's just due to colorful icons and fancy toolbar grips I used to?

Well, I don't see nothing better on these screenshots..
IMO Xp style looks very well, even better than oryginal. Yes there are some places to improvement like adding shaded left pane in menu bar or making toolbars similar to those from vs, but u++ gui look dosn't deserve to calling it ugly.
BTW TheIde goal is not to be beautiful but useful and comfortable. I coded long time in vs and bcb and IMO neither of them was better than theide (I'm not talking about vs + visual assist)

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2846 is a reply to message #2844]

Fri, 28 April 2006 00:34

prof
Messages: 7
Registered: April 2006

Promising Member

Yes. TheIDE is comfortable for me as for a developer. VisualAssist is just a code completion engine smarter than Intellisense. TheIDE already has a completion engine, and just need to make the c++ parser more complete. So there's nothing wrong with TheIDE.

I unfortunately do see a big difference between the widgets in those apps I mentioned and upp widgets. Maybe we should make a new poll - how many other people do see a difference in looks significant enough in order not to use upp GUI for their programs.

Compare Office 97 and Office 2003, 7zip and WinZip/WinRar, early Mozilla themes and Firefox. I've seen Mozilla before and refused to migrate due to its awful themes. But when I saw Firefox 0.8 with it's perfect Qute theme, it was the first open source GUI I really liked. When in 0.9 Qute was replaced with a more conservative theme, a lot of people were disappointed. So the community fixed the default theme in Firefox and now I'm equally comfortable with both.

And also two examples from the Web: http://www.visual-eiffel.com/front_content.php and http://www.sgi.com/support/custeducation/courses/linux/altix _adv_sys_adminii.html

The two pages just represent some textual information. No super DHTML/AJAX, no drop down menus etc on both pages. All usability recomendations seems to be followed. I can't tell what's wrong with the first page, but I definitely liked the latter more. It looks more balanced, more professional.

[Updated on: Fri, 28 April 2006 00:35]

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2847 is a reply to message #2843]

Fri, 28 April 2006 00:39

mirek
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Registered: November 2005

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prof wrote on Thu, 27 April 2006 16:19

I'm XP user and I use "windows classic" theme. I think that these look better than TheIDE. Maybe, it's just due to colorful icons and fancy toolbar grips I used to?

Well, this was the first "visual style" created and I guess we are 99% equivalent there.

However, perhaps you are really speaking about how TheIDE icons look like - OK, there are drawbacks based on our art skills Smile

Please, note also that many of screenshots you have posted are in fact NOT using "classic theme". E.g. that svn screenshot has quite alternative appearance. In "classic theme", menus should look like menus in the windows explorer.

(And yes, toolbar grips are on the list Wink

Mirek

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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #2849 is a reply to message #2846]

Fri, 28 April 2006 00:55

mirek
Messages: 14105
Registered: November 2005

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Well, I think you are mixing the "application visual design" and "widget appearance".

In other words, if you see some differences between U++ "classic" widgets (buttons, options etc...) and Win32 "classics", simply take and post screenshots of both to demonstrate differences and post to bugs database, as we are trying to minimize them (but maybe wait a month or so for the final skinning engine).

Mirek

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