Re: A native Windows binding for PHP - released

Hi Justin, This is a nice idea. I agree that this would be quite useful and in the beginning I even thought about modeling WinBinder after PHP-GTK... However I decided not to go this way because I wanted a library that would be very simple and straigtforward to use and not necessarily object-oriented, because these are -- at least to me -- among the best features of PHP. But I did want a more flexible structure anyway, so I created a two-layer architecture that in fact separates the Windows binding from the Zend layer. This was THE most difficult and time-consuming task of the whole project to date, because I realized this potential only when I already had a lot of code, but I thought it was worthwhile so I did it anyway. Thus it IS possible to use WinBinder for a Mac, for instance, provided that somebody recodes the Windows layer so that it works on the Mac API (or whatever it's called). Same applies to Linux and other OSs. Reversely, it is perfectly possible (at least in theory) for a PHP-GTK developer to build a different Zend layer that mimics PHP-GTK, so existing code could be used to build native Windows applications! (Probably this was what you had in mind in the first place). This two-layer architecture also makes possible to build a binder for other script languages (or even compiled languages) by replacing the Zend layer with something else. In http://winbinder.sourceforge.net/overview.php there is a diagram that hopefully will make things a bit clearer. I look forward to someone who likes these ideas and wants to build these derivative libraries. Meanwhile, I have to focus in the code of the project now -- the next goal is to reach beta state, and I have a lot of work to do before I get there! Many thanks for your ideas, please keep sending them. Best, ------------------------------------------------------ Rubem Pechansky "Justin Hannus" <jhannus@visualconceptsinc.com> escreveu na mensagem news:20040917194916.2870.qmail@pb1.pair.com... > Though I haven't had a chance to check out the code, it sounds very > promising to me. > > > Your ideas, comments, criticisms and suggestions are very welcome. > > One thought though.... probably allot more work -- With having 2 separate > interfaces for windowing, PHP-GTK and WinBinder, creating a single api would > be nice. Like xslt and the PDO extension (using different backend libs under > same php API) or like java's awt or swing. And when a user went to compile > php he/she can enable the windowing library for his/her platform. > > i.e. --enable-windowing --with-windowing-[gtk|winbinder|*] > > Just a thought. This would obviously require allot more thought and > collaboration between the PHP-GTK group but would be very nice. With this > setup there would also be more room to expand for other windowing toolkits > like KDE, Cocoa (Mac) etc. > > -Justin Hannus > > "Rubem Pechansky" <pechansky@hypervisual.com> wrote in message > news:20040917183524.71003.qmail@pb1.pair.com... > > Hi all, > > > > I have designed and successfully prototyped a native Windows binding for > > PHP. This binding is very lightweight and it is already capable of doing > > dialogs, controls, and a lot more with a few dozen lines of code. PHP can > > thus be used as a tool for quick development of native Windows > applications. > > > > I have just released this project to the public as Open Source at > > http://winbinder.sourceforge.net/. Although it is still a > > work in > progress, > > you can take a look at the source code, download a working demo and play > > with it a little bit. > > > > Your ideas, comments, criticisms and suggestions are very welcome. > > > > Several people advised me to submit it to PECL, and I think it's a good > idea > > too. However I wonder if it's not too early to submit it since it's still > > incomplete and buggy. Wouldn't it be better to submit it only after a more > > stable release? What do you think? > > > > ------------------------------------------------------ > > Rubem Pechansky