This is a great idea, and is something that Clojure really needs in my opinion (for starters it would be nice to be able to write GUI apps in Clojure without worrying about the Java level, with its completely different and completely annoying semantics). My vote is for Swing, simply because the difference in look and feel doesn't seem to be all that great. If the added difficulty of deploying bought tremendous LAF benefits I would say yeah use SWT, but really the differences don't seem to justify it.
Also, it could always be forked later on if there were a big enough contingency of SWT fans, and the work put into building Swing version would go a long way toward that goal, especially considering that this is going to abstract away the Swing-specific stuff. Rob On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 11:18 AM, Luke VanderHart <luke.vanderh...@gmail.com > wrote: > My side project is a fairly complex GUI application written in > Clojure. Recently, I've become irritated with using Java interop for > everything. It's not that Clojure doesn't have nice java interop - it > does. It's just that when interacting with a GUI framework, which is a > large part of my app, I have to be back in mutable object-oriented > land, worrying about class hierarchies, mutable state, locks, etc. > Yucky. > > So, with a perhaps dangerous lack of sanity and without any guarantee > of success, I've decided to try my hand at writing an idiomatic > Clojure GUI library. If I have success (which I doubt) I will of > course make it available as open source. > > I intend for it to be mostly declarative, with a nice DSL for defining > GUI elements. Each component will also implement map, and use one of > Clojure's reference types as an interface for inspecting / updating > its state. I may also implement some aspects of Functional Reactive > Programming wherever it's convenient to do so. > > What you all must help me decide is what GUI framework to use as the > underpinnings of it. It's genuinely hard to decide. I have at least > some experience with all of them, so I have no strong preference, but > I'd like to get your input. I did consider trying to make it abstract > enough that you could plug in *any* of them under the hood, but > there's enough differences between the frameworks that that would get > very ugly very fast. > > Possibilities are: > > AWT > Pros: native widgets, bundled with Java, low-level > Cons: few widgets, considered somewhat obselete > > Swing > Pros: bundled with Java, good widget selection > Cons: non-native widgets > > SWT > Pros: native widgets, widely used > Cons: requires platform-specific libs > > QT Jambi > Pros: native widgets, huge widget selection, highly-regarded framework > Cons: requires platform-specific libs, writing custom widgets is > hairy, momentum and support seem to be lagging since Nokia dropped > official support. > > Remember, the actual API won't matter - that will be completely > abstracted away. So try to focus on the framework's look and feel. > Also let me know if I've missed any of the framework's key > characteristics. > > Thanks! > > -Luke > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Clojure" group. > To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with > your first post. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<clojure%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
