On Tue, 19 Dec 2000, Kevin Smith wrote:

> Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs / dmu.ac.uk> wrote:
	[...]
> >this field.  Should we not be providing an abstraction to which
> >any GUI can be attached?  I see such an abstraction as a superset
	[...]
> 
> In one sense, that's what each of these cross-
> platform GUI toolkits are. They try to hide 
> Win32, GTK, XLIB, or whatever from you. I guess 
> you're proposing moving up one additional layer, 
> and wrapping the wrappers. I suspect you'd have 
> several problems with that approach:
> 1. Different paradigms

     The windows metaphor is pretty standard.  They all have
     ways and means of doing open, close, iconify, resize...
 
> 2. Performance

     Possibly. Perhaps worth paying to get portability.

> 3. Keeping up with multiple underlying "engines"

     Granted. OTOH, their designers may want to provide the Ruby
     tie ins themselves.  It helps promote their system.
> 
> But it would be cool. Perhaps a very, very simple 
> toolkit could pull it off. Something with almost 
> no options or flexibility.

Maybe it was not such a mad idea, I have just found that:
"Design Patterns", Gamma, E et al. Page 151  Bridge pattern
actually uses windowing systems as its example...

> 
> Kevin
> 
> 
	Hugh
	hgs / dmu.ac.uk