Version 1 of Going Native with Komodo's GUI Builder

Updated 2005-07-27 22:15:51 by JH

JH: ActiveState's Komodo IDE has a GUI Builder built in for building Tk GUIs. It is itself written in Tcl/Tk (based off SpecTcl, although most of that code went out with the trash folder long ago ...). Previously Komodo has shipped on Windows, Linux and Solaris. We are currently porting it to OS X, GUI Builder included. This page shows a before and after, with some comments.

GUI Builder Before

This used all the classic Tk controls, with some megawidgets from BWidgets and some custom-rolled stuff. For all intents and purposes, this worked fine on Windows and unix variants. It isn't so happy for Aqua, as you can see ...

http://www.tcl.tk/community/hobbs/guib-osx-before.png

GUI Builder After

OK, this isn't "complete", but works for alpha look and feel satisfaction.

http://www.tcl.tk/community/hobbs/guib-osx-after.png

Comments

OK, I should comment on the many changes I had to make. First off though, a significant chunk of time spent was just transitioning to tile and themed widgets. This work will eventually be used across all platforms. The next part was working with various issues in the themed widgets, where it wasn't appropriate, they didn't quite work right (eg, scrollbar), or an appropriate widget wasn't available (eg, having to use menubuttons instead of spinboxes, which is actually more correct from a Aqua HIG pov).