On Mon, 20 May 2013 13:49:28 -0700 "Adam Wilson" <flybo...@gmail.com> wrote: > > And my point is that your assertion that it can never be done is > patently untrue. If MS can do it, there is no technical barrier to > FOSS doing it, other than our own mental conception of what we are > capable of. The point about WPF is that the system is so flexible in > it's rendering that you can precisely emulate any native OS toolkit, > or go off in a completely new direction. I prefer that flexibility as > a UI designer. >
I still have a hard time believing that it's realistic for it take take everything into account. *Even* if you go to all the effort to make every render and behavior pixel-perfect, you're *still* failing to account for all of the following things, all of which actually *exist*: - Software to allow the user to custom-reskin the system. Yes, even on Windows this exists, and has for a looong time. Getting a third-party GUI toolkit compatible with this would likely be quite difficult, if even possible. - On windows, I use a program called KatMouse that allows me to scroll any control by just pointing at it and using my mouse's scroll-wheel. No need to manually "focus" the control before the retarded Win system allows me to scroll it. This is literally my #1 favorite windows program. But this obviously doesn't work on programs that merely *emulate* the system's look-and-feel, no matter how meticulous the emulation. Hell, even the UI changes in "native" MS-developed Vista and Win7 break it at least half the time. - Tools to reveal the value behind "******"-filled password boxes. Sounds like a black-hat tool, but I've personally had legitimate need to use it. - Anything else that involves either GUI-introspection or adding a cross-application UI feature. There's plenty of other entirely valid use-cases. Unless I'm mistaken, these sorts of things *cannot* be handled by a non-native UI without either the given utility special-casing every specific UI toolkit out there, or the UI toolkit (somehow) special-casing every such tool/utility. Neither approach is scalable enough to be a real solution. Ultimately, there must be *some* common system-wide UI, without cheaters, so that cross-cutting features are *realistically* possible and not inherently unreliable. Of course, you could say that such uses aren't important, but I'd very strongly disagree.
