Programming language to write GUI. Multiple platform support.

[Andy_126]

Hi all,

First off, I hope this ends up in the languages section since that is my intention. No clear indications on the posting window that is what will happen.

I need to write a GUI that will be hosted on both UX 10.2 and Win2K. Background operations include calculations, sorting, generation/display of bar graphs based on calculations, pulldown menus, and the ability to print from GUI.

Could you give recommendations on what programming language you would use? I suspect answers such as C/C++, Perl, Tcl/Tck, Java may top the list - but am open to all suggestions. Top considerations are:

A) Ease of writing /programming
B) Multi platform support (UX/Win)
C) Ability to use one single language

Lesser considerations/concerns are throughput/speed.

Thanks for any input you can provide.

Andy

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

C/C++ though portable in source code might not be as easy as you think, because many of the GUI libraries are not ported/poratble/available for `the other' platform. Installing Cygwin on M$Win might help a lot here, but I can imagine that it is not an option at the client side.

Perl/Tk is available and easy to build/port. Personally I see it as an ultimate tool in showing how things can be done. For M$Win, there are several choices, either Cygwin (including XFree and perl/Tk by default) or ActivePerl (including Tk by default).

Cygwin's XFree has the Unix look to offer, whilst ActivePerl adopts to native Win32 look and feel. Most of my apps run on both platforms (I don't use Activeperl a lot, because the font conventions are quite different from unix/linux world's point of view)

Disadvantage of Perl/Tk is that there are no app-building tools available (that build easily on HP-UX), so it's all coding by hand, no drag-n-drop window placement. If you want that, you could try to look at wxperl, which is offering more building tools.

Enjoy, have FUN! H.Merijn

[Mark Grant]

procura has it pretty much rapped up there but I would suggest you take a look at the "qt" library which you can get here. http://www.trolltech.com/

[Paddy_1]

Hands down it would be Java given your requirements

(a)Easy - Not a steep learning curve
You would use "Swing" libraried that would give you the native look and feel.
(b)Java is designed for portability
(c)Java can be used for the entire lifecycle

One big Con is that you take a hit in performance when compared to other languages but this has been more than compensated in terms of readability and maintenance of the code.

Code-Reuse is a big thing in Java which mean you can change you GUI modules without affecting your calculations and you can have real time display of the same data in various formats like bar,pie etc.

Hope this helps
Paddy

[Alzhy]

Easy: TCL/Tk
Intermediate: Perl with TCL/tk
Best but needs Expertise: JAVA

[Andy_126]

Thanks for the input thus far. Since this question is partially based on opinion/preference, I don't think there will be any 10's - sorry.

I'm still open more input if anybody has additional thoughts on this. Thanks.

Andy