[sword-devel] roadmap for Windows frontend(?)

[Chris Little]

On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Christian Renz wrote:

> From an UI point of view, I'd say I don't really like the small window
> to open up new desktops -- I prefer MDI or a mixed approach
> (e.g. Opera 7's tabs and windows). And of course on Mac OS
> (Classic/X), you'd want to put all of the master window's
> functionality in the menu bar. But of course, that's a whole different
> discussion. 
> 
> I _do_ like the ideas of customized desktops (or "projects") with a
> selection of modules that can be saved/restored etc. very much -- way
> to go, Chris!

The BibleCS 2.0 prototype is all Troy's work, so way to go Troy.  One 
issue is that the whole MDI interface was specifically one of the 
interfaces being avoided.  Troy can explain his reasons for that, though 
perhaps there are different ways of looking at it.  (i.e. is the 
Bible/Commentary/LD window itself a "document" in the MDI sense or is the 
desktop (with multiple Bible/Commentary/LD windows) the "document"?)

> While I am using MSVC++ myself (and the student version is somewhat
> affordable), I would vote against using MFC. A Sword 2.0 is going to
> take a lot of work on the UI, and I feel it's not really worth the
> effort to put it into something that's not portable.

GnomeSword, BibleTime, and BibleCS are all essentially non-portable and
took a lot of time & effort to write.  We need to maximize what we offer
our Windows users, especially since they are the largest market share
among our users.  If (and that's a big if) everything that can be done
with MFC (or VCL or any other platform-specific framework) cannot be done
with wxWindows, then wxWindows shouldn't be used for development.

I actually think that using MSVC alone would be the greatest benefit (or 
more accurately, using anything other than Borland).  Using a platform's 
standard compiler relieves so many headaches.

> There are other platform-independent toolkits as well, although probably
> not as complete as wxWindows, and probably not available in Unicode.

What are the Unicode capabilities of wxWindows?  Are we going to be able 
to fully internationalize the interface with Unicode?

Chris