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Re: Sad... [message #21596 is a reply to message #21595]

Thu, 28 May 2009 18:58

cbpporter
Messages: 1401
Registered: September 2007

Ultimate Contributor

Maybe we should produce a new GUI layout and have two modes: one for beginners, with a lot of dialogs reduced in complexity and the freed up space dedicated to help windows and stuff and of course the normal mode, which is basically the way things are right now.

We could try to mix U++'s package management with and GUI for the IDE similar to the one of QtCreator. Has anybody seen it? It is extremely lightweight, have a very strange and sparse GUI, yet it is so intuitive that I couldn't believe that that is a C++ GUI and not a toy. It has big tabs for everything and a biiiiiig green play button that compiles and runs your application. And under the apparently dumbed down interface there are a lot of features. Not as many and in the TheIDE, but still a great start for a different kind of IDE. Here are some screenshots under MAC, which is quite fitting seeing that it is a MAC like user friendly interface: Here.
And some other resouces: Here.
Or maybe it is not user friendlily at all and I'm used to things beeing more complicated Smile

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Or we could do what Borland did slightly before becoming CodeGear (I may have my history wrong): copy shamelessly Visual Studio. Heck, Kdevelop did that also to a lower extent. And it worked for both parties because like it or not, Visual Studio is ubiquitous. I haven't worked in VS6 or 7 for quite a while now, but I bet I still know their GUI by heart. I played around with newer versions and they are a lot better, yet somehow familiar.

But these are extreme changes. Just potential ideas. I wouldn't like to loose what TheIDE is. I love it's package management and I plan to break it down even more one day: having the ability to select components from a package with automatic dependency resolution.

So basically the question is: can we take everything that is great about TheIDE and package it so that it is appealing and intuitive to new users of U++?

But while I would like U++ to be the number one toolkit out there (or more realistically the number two because we are never going to overthrow Qt), I'm generally quite happy in our little corner of obscurity. U++ has had a tremendous growth in features even if it has remained pretty much the same. Some usability featured are desired and also a better stability and more releases that don't break anything. But IMO this "spartan mode" has payed off and now there is great tool than nobody else is using out there. I'm using it and pretty much like it for everything that is not C (which is very little right now for me because I'm working almost exclusively in C and building with make files Sad

() and I think other people feel the same way. On the other hand pick semantics and either some immature implementations at the time being or lack of understanding from my part did cause problems for me along the way which would have not happened with a mainstream toolkit.

The big advantage of it gaining popularity would be that one could walk up to the boss and say: I want to uses Vector instead of vector. I don't think we'll ever get there because even boost is rarely accepted in some circles, even though parts of it are being added to C++ once in a while.

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