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Stdwin: Standard window interface by Guido Van Rossum [pdf]

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Re: Stdwin: Standard window interface by Guido Van Rossum [pdf]

#11

Post by romankolpak »

ramon156 wrote: post #9
shevy-java wrote: post #3

How old is this? 1989 or something like that? Guido was probably quite young when he wrote it. Looks like LaTeX? Edit: Someone else wrote 1988 which I suppose makes sense, as the latest reference at the end is from 1988 too. So then Guido was 32 years old.

> quite young > 32 years old As a ~20 year old this feels so weird to read. I'm still considered young in ~10 years?

It's all relative. When I was 20, I'd consider myself old at 36. Now when I am 36, my definition of old has shifted and it's now somewhere past 50. I guess "old" for a person is just that person 10+ years older :)

Re: Stdwin: Standard window interface by Guido Van Rossum [pdf]

#12

Post by rowanG077 »

ramon156 wrote: post #9
shevy-java wrote: post #3

How old is this? 1989 or something like that? Guido was probably quite young when he wrote it. Looks like LaTeX? Edit: Someone else wrote 1988 which I suppose makes sense, as the latest reference at the end is from 1988 too. So then Guido was 32 years old.

> quite young > 32 years old As a ~20 year old this feels so weird to read. I'm still considered young in ~10 years?

Young is relative. To an 80 year old someone who is 40 is young. To an 8 year old someone who is 20 is old.

Re: Stdwin: Standard window interface by Guido Van Rossum [pdf]

#13

Post by magpi3 »

ramon156 wrote: post #9
shevy-java wrote: post #3

How old is this? 1989 or something like that? Guido was probably quite young when he wrote it. Looks like LaTeX? Edit: Someone else wrote 1988 which I suppose makes sense, as the latest reference at the end is from 1988 too. So then Guido was 32 years old.

> quite young > 32 years old As a ~20 year old this feels so weird to read. I'm still considered young in ~10 years?

Yes

Re: Stdwin: Standard window interface by Guido Van Rossum [pdf]

#14

Post by swiftcoder »

ramon156 wrote: post #9
shevy-java wrote: post #3

How old is this? 1989 or something like that? Guido was probably quite young when he wrote it. Looks like LaTeX? Edit: Someone else wrote 1988 which I suppose makes sense, as the latest reference at the end is from 1988 too. So then Guido was 32 years old.

> quite young > 32 years old As a ~20 year old this feels so weird to read. I'm still considered young in ~10 years?

> As a ~20 year old this feels so weird to read. I'm still considered young in ~10 years?

You'll still feel young too! It's really weird when you get to your mid 30's and realise that all the 20-somethings view you as old

Re: Stdwin: Standard window interface by Guido Van Rossum [pdf]

#15

Post by graemep »

flohofwoe wrote: post #8
decasia wrote: post #6

It's a neat project. Write cross platform desktop apps in C. Presumably it would not have been very usable in practice in the late 1980s, because of all the OTHER system interfaces that still weren't portable, even if the windowing system was available in a portable way. I can remember the subsequent period in which Java desktop apps were relatively common. They had cross platform UI by default. But the problem was:…

The other popular option for cross-platform UI apps was Tcl/Tk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tk_(software) ...which even leaked into other language ecosystems like Python: https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.html

Which had the ugliness problem then, although it is a lot better now.

Re: Stdwin: Standard window interface by Guido Van Rossum [pdf]

#16

Post by FpUser »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #10
ramon156 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> quite young > 32 years old As a ~20 year old this feels so weird to read. I'm still considered young in ~10 years?

I’m nearly 64. Back when I was a teenager, people in their 20s were “old farts.” Nowadays, I look at people in their 40s, as “kids.” Here’s my first ever engineering project (1987): https://littlegreenviper.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/TF30... I was 25, at the time, and a fairly newly-minted EE.

Brother in arms ;)

I just turned 65. Own 1 person custom software development company and am very much active professionally. Started programming in the 80s while working as a research scientist.

Re: Stdwin: Standard window interface by Guido Van Rossum [pdf]

#17

Post by JohnDeHope »

decasia wrote: post #6

It's a neat project. Write cross platform desktop apps in C. Presumably it would not have been very usable in practice in the late 1980s, because of all the OTHER system interfaces that still weren't portable, even if the windowing system was available in a portable way. I can remember the subsequent period in which Java desktop apps were relatively common. They had cross platform UI by default. But the problem was:…

> cross platform GUIs are ugly by default, compared to fully native desktop apps, because they don't entirely replicate the affordances or the style of the platform;

I think this is an implementation detail. It's up to the software stack whether it leaves off before drawing the UI elements on screen, or goes ahead and takes on that responsibility too. The wxWidgets toolkit uses the runtime platform's UI, so it does not draw the widgets themselves. Java Swing took on the task of drawing the UI elements on the screen in its own style.

Re: Stdwin: Standard window interface by Guido Van Rossum [pdf]

#20

Post by StilesCrisis »

JohnDeHope wrote: post #17
decasia wrote: post #6

It's a neat project. Write cross platform desktop apps in C. Presumably it would not have been very usable in practice in the late 1980s, because of all the OTHER system interfaces that still weren't portable, even if the windowing system was available in a portable way. I can remember the subsequent period in which Java desktop apps were relatively common. They had cross platform UI by default. But the problem was:…

> cross platform GUIs are ugly by default, compared to fully native desktop apps, because they don't entirely replicate the affordances or the style of the platform; I think this is an implementation detail. It's up to the software stack whether it leaves off before drawing the UI elements on screen, or goes ahead and takes on that responsibility too. The wxWidgets toolkit uses the runtime platform's UI, so it does n…

When OS X was new, Apple was still under the assumption that Java on the desktop was important, and they built an in-house Java with full Aqua support. It was still _terrible_! All the Aqua-specific affordances like animation or shadows were janky or absent. Sizing and positioning always felt weird because the application was written assuming Windows-shaped controls.

Basically, cross-platform GUI only looks good on the platform that it was originally designed for. Unless the other platforms make zero interesting choices, they will always look worse.

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