<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 30 Apr 2009, at 11:12, Daniel Carrera wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Thomas Davie wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite">Really, here's what that *should* look like:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/rpg/tatd2/controls-macosx.png">http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/rpg/tatd2/controls-macosx.png</a><br></blockquote><br>Your link is for Panther, my link was for Jaguar. The wxHaskell also has a screenshot on Panther:<br><br><a href="http://wxhaskell.sourceforge.net/images/controls-macosx2.png">http://wxhaskell.sourceforge.net/images/controls-macosx2.png</a><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>My link was on leopard actually, but that still looks significantly different to the natively designed UI.</div><blockquote type="cite"><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><br></font><blockquote type="cite">Of note though, the main problem with WX is not that the controls look different, it's that they behave differently. UI is not just about looks ;).<br></blockquote><br>Ok.. how do they behave? I bet you that they behave better than the Gtk controls on OS X... ugh.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I very much doubt that actually – mac users in my experience notice when things are annoyingly slightly different from the norm – a kind of uncanny valley effect, it's almost what you expect, but not quite. In the mean time, gtk being entirely non-OS X like running in X11 says "hey, I'm different, deal with it", and people do.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>You are right that UI is not just looks. That's another of the issues with X11 on OS X, it behaves wrong. The command key doesn't do anything, so for example, it's a major pain to use Gimp on OS X without a two button mouse.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Well yes, but then all macs come with 2 button mice, so *shrug*. But yes, X11 apps in general behave wrong, and mac users don't like them much, but they like them better than apps that pretend to be OS X like, but don't get it right.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>How about Qt? Do you know if Qt behaves well on OS X? I thought that Qt didn't look native on OS X (I'm on Ubuntu right now, so I can't check).<br></div></blockquote></div><br><div>Qt get closer into uncanny valley than gtk does, because it runs natively.</div><div><br></div><div>This really though comes down to the fact that it's totally impossible to design cross platform UIs for applications. Different platforms UIs behave differently, so deal with it, and write different UIs for the different platforms. Don't expect everyone to fit into your one-size-fits-all straight jacket.</div><div><br></div><div>This is extra work, but 1) it enforces a good abstraction layer between your UI and your actual application, and 2) it gives major benefits in terms of happy customers.</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div></body></html>