Re: ANN: Lua OS 0.6

[Lorenzo Donati <lorenzodonatibz@...>]

On 25/08/2011 11.37, Miles Bader wrote:
> Alex Queiroz<asandroq@gmail.com>  writes:
> > > I've sometimes pondered the possibility of a lightweight Lua GUI kit
> > > that provided an abstraction over a native back-end, e.g. the Windows
> > > version would use the Windows API, the Linux version would use GTK, OS
> > > X would use Cocoa. Just the basic common functionality, emphasis on
> > > small footprint.
> >
> > Sounds like IUP.
>
> Yeah... unfortunately, IUP seems a bit hard to get going due to the
> build infrastructure it uses.
>
> I thought one of the devs mentioned they had tried to improve the
> build behavior, but it still didn't seem very friendly last time I
> tried it, a month or two ago.
>
> [By "didn't seem very friendly" I mean: "failed to compile out of the
> box, reading docs and poking around at the makefiles didn't make it
> obvious how to get it working, and eventually I ran out of patience."

Exactly what it happened to me a some months ago! I couldn't have 
described it better!

> I imagine someone who _really_ wants to make it compile could make it
> work with enough effort...]

Unfortunately, since my C skills are limited, I gave up quite early.

> I suppose something like GTK+ or Qt may also be hard to compile from
> scratch, but on the other hand, they're usually available
> pre-installed or pre-packaged anyway, so for most people it doesn't
> matter.
It would be very nice to have such a possibility for IUP & friends. I 
don't know very much about them, but seem a good alternative for 
lightweight GUI.

On a related note, I wonder why no-one has mentioned wxLua (bindings to 
wxWidgets). It is not a GUI-only library, but it is fairly stable (even 
if a bit outdated). Not too lightweight (~10MB the needed DLLs on 
windows), but neither huge, at least for PC platforms (smart phones may 
be another story).


> -Miles

-- Lorenzo