CiderPress news

[fadden]

I'm pleased to report that issue #43 has been resolved affirmatively.

https://github.com/fadden/ciderpress/issues/43

[TomCh]

On Friday, 12 May 2023 at 02:13:24 UTC+1, fadden wrote:
> I'm pleased to report that issue #43 has been resolved affirmatively.
>
> https://github.com/fadden/ciderpress/issues/43

This looks amazing Andy!
Woz support too.

[Eric Le Bras]

Le vendredi 12 mai 2023 à 03:13:24 UTC+2, fadden a écrit :
> I'm pleased to report that issue #43 has been resolved affirmatively.
>
> https://github.com/fadden/ciderpress/issues/43

Tremendous :-)

[Nick Westgate]

On Friday, May 12, 2023 at 11:13:24 AM UTC+10, fadden wrote:
> I'm pleased to report that issue #43 has been resolved affirmatively.
>
> https://github.com/fadden/ciderpress/issues/43

Awesome!

Being a C# fan also, I understand the cross-platform UI quandary.
Avalonia and Uno are well regarded and support drag and drop etc.

Thanks for all the great open source things you've created!

Cheers,
Nick.

[fadden]

On Thursday, May 18, 2023 at 3:25:40 AM UTC-7, Nick Westgate wrote:
> Being a C# fan also, I understand the cross-platform UI quandary.
> Avalonia and Uno are well regarded and support drag and drop etc.

The best breakdown I've found is this: https://github.com/robloo/PublicDocs/blob/master/XAMLFrameworkComparison.md

It got a significant update about a month ago that reflected the progress Avalonia has made. I expect that'll be the best approach.

I think I really just need three things: DataGrid, TreeView, and something like FlowDocument to display fancy text. The file converter keeps the text and formatting separate, so it's possible to do the file viewer with just a basic text edit control, but that's no fun when you want to look at Teach / AWGS or even just Applesoft with syntax coloration. I haven't worked out how to do a sector-edit dialog yet though.

The framework comparison document says, "WPF can now run cross-platform using Wine Mono or Avalonia XPF". Avalonia XPF is "coming soon" and commercial rather than free. I took a brief look at whether https://github.com/madewokherd/wine-mono would help - it might even allow SourceGen to run on Mac/Linux since it's a .NET Framework app - but getting it installed is so awkward right now that I doubt anybody would go through it.

Drag & drop is easy in-app but gets complicated when you try to drag between separate instances of the app or out to the Finder/Explorer, because it's platform-specific, and none of the frameworks help (not even Microsoft's). For example: https://dlaa.me/blog/post/9913083

[Nick Westgate]

On Friday, May 19, 2023 at 1:56:20 AM UTC+10, fadden wrote:
> The best breakdown I've found is this: https://github.com/robloo/PublicDocs/blob/master/XAMLFrameworkComparison.md

That's a great summary. I haven't really used any of it yet, so I hope you blog about it when you do! ; - )

> For example: https://dlaa.me/blog/post/9913083

Crikey, you know it's dire when Raymond Chen wants to write about it!
Drag & drop worked great on various operating systems (I liked RISC-OS) 30 years ago.
In IT we're cursed to eternally work with with poorly re-invented wheels.

Anyway, all off-topic here. I had a question about SourceGen - I'll log an issue.

Cheers,
Nick.

[Christopher G. Mason]

On 5/11/2023 9:13 PM, fadden wrote:
> I'm pleased to report that issue #43 has been resolved affirmatively.
>
> https://github.com/fadden/ciderpress/issues/43

Would something like wxWidgets be helpful here? There exists C#/.NET
bindings.....

Not a fan of most "cross platform" widgets, because they just don't
look/feel at that nice..... like GTK. Native controls are always best,
but I realize all platforms aren't going to have all the control types
you need available.

[fadden]

On Tuesday, May 30, 2023 at 6:36:48 PM UTC-7, Christopher G. Mason wrote:
> Would something like wxWidgets be helpful here? There exists C#/.NET
> bindings.....

I used wxWidgets for a project once. They based their design on Windows MFC, which is what I used for the original CiderPress.

The world seems to be moving to XAML-style user interface coding. There's a bit of a learning cliff, but once you get used to them they're actually kind of nice to work with. I figured the best bet for writing something that will be usable for another 20 years is to embrace recent trends. (CiderPress was first released March 2003.)

I'm not sure it's still the case that native controls are the best. GUI toolkits can use hardware-accelerated rendering to provide a consistent interface across platforms without the speed hit that used to be associated with doing that. There are some things that you'd like to be the same across all apps on a platform, like file dialogs and font pickers, but WPF doesn't exactly provide those anyway. (20 years later and there still isn't a dialog that lets you pick both files and folders... and the folder picker is still awful.)

In any event, the command-line tools should work on most modern systems, and won't break down when the next great GUI reimagining comes along. Sector editing is kind of tedious, but you can't have everything. :-)