Windows UI summer of code project

[Gregor Dick]

Timothy Waterhouse wrote:
> Gregor,
> 
> Just to throw my two cents in, the document/view model is simply for
> separating out the data from the UI and can be ignored completely if you
> so wish (there's even an option when making a new project to disable
> it).  I think MFC would be hugely useful for improving development time
> with almost no real performance overhead because it contains classes for
> all the common tasks.  Best of all, you can use the UI designer which
> uses components wrapped in MFC classes (just make sure when you make
> your project you make it as a dialog based application).  The biggest
> thing to remember when you're working on the project is that you won't
> be maintaining it forever and it needs to be in a state where others can
> easily (or as easily as possible) maintain it and make changes.
> 
> Plus, who really wants to deal with writing a message pump and all the
> mess associated with? (ok, I do, I love writing win32 apps from ASM) :-)
> 
> FYI: I'm not a contributor nor a decision maker with pidgin, I just
> figured I'd throw my two cents in from my experience with Windows
> programming.  Feel free to ignore me/this e-mail.
> 
> -Tim (CaffineeHacker on irc)

Thanks for that. I'd noticed that MSVC provides a "dialog-based"
template for MFC projects, as alternatives to its document/view SDI and
MDI projects, but had never experimented with it. It is mainly my lack
of experience with the MFC that would discourage me from using it. I
think if Wade does go down the .NET route, though, having a
straight-Win32 UI as the alternative will lead to a sharper contrast
between the two front-ends, which is probably a good thing given that
we're both looking to solve the same problem.

The UI designer is still helpful for non-MFC projects, and I intend to
make liberal use of it, although some of its more exotic functionality
is indeed limited to projects that use the framework.

One thing that I didn't mention before is distribution and associated
licensing problems: I understood that the binary MFC library is
redistributable, but that the source is subject to some restrictions. I
might well be wrong and/or out-of-date on this, though.

-Gregor