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generic form designer

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slowmaker:
Does anyone know if this exists? I've hopped around from one language to the other a lot (I'm sort of a perpetual beginner), and many of the compilers/interpreters I've ended up with did not have GUI designing tools. I end up either doing the run-it-and-adjust-the-numbers thing over and over, or I use the designer from another language and copy the numbers over.

Even when the language does have a designer, it often does not have the flexibility to spit out code the way I want it to, so I still end up picking out the numbers and plopping them into my code.

I've often wished for a form designer that just output the basic information of button locations, text, window dimensions, etc. without trying to write the code for me. I end up having to rewrite it anyway, so most of the generated code is just visual clutter.

So...any ideas?

mouser:
you migth try one of the wxwidgets form designers, like:
http://wxformbuilder.org/

slowmaker:
Thanks, I'll check it out.

mnemonic:
you migth try one of the wxwidgets form designers, like:
http://wxformbuilder.org/
-mouser (January 03, 2010, 12:44 AM)
--- End quote ---

Agreed - this is a really good tool.  From experience, it doesn't produce too much "clutter", but you will need to refactor as it produces one big lump of code.

slowmaker:
Whoooosh; been playing with wxformbuilder a bit, and that 'sizer' thing is a bit rough for an old pea-brain like me. I googled for how to just drag the controls around where I want them, didn't find it.

I found a thread where some poor soul had the temerity to mention this might be a good thing for some of us, and they ...  weren't very nice (basically said 'you're an idiot for wanting to do this, all application goals must be the same as ours, etc., etc.'). The thread mentions that absolute positioning is possible, so I'll keep looking.

I can definitely see the power inherent in having a framework that auto-adjusts your widgets, but since I won't actually be using the framework, I'll have to find something else if I can't figure how to use it in a drag-to-position and drag-to-size way. I suspect, though, that what I want doesn't exist (the generic aspect, I mean).

Man, remember NRE? Or the old MS Access form editor? Drop, size, select, align to this, center with that, bing bang boom. Sweet. I miss editors like that.

Don't get me wrong; I can see that if I ever move beyond 'toy' progs I would might need to look at putting in the effort to think in terms of things auto-adjusting, and I would probably be overjoyed to sacrifice a little drag-and-drop comfort in return for not having to manually write all that adjustment code later on. I'm sure I'll be glad to have snagged this prog when that time comes.

Oh, and I read some more in that thread I mentioned; they did lighten up on the second page and start giving the guy some attempts at helpfulness rather than the knee-jerk (emphasis on the jerk) nonsense that was on the first page.

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