GUI Toolkits - Notus

This is a GUI toolkit that I had never heard of or seen until yesterday.

Notus is a GUI toolkit based on the ideas of generic C++ programming, according to the website it is an attempt to create a domain model.

It hasn't been developed for a very long time now (over a year) according to the website but looking at the CVS logs there were changes six months ago to the source code.

It is by no means a finished article but it has some interesting ideas (although it looks like it could e incredibly complicated thanks to lots of templates). It is not as comprehensive as the other library that uses the same concepts Win32 GUI Generics.

The demos are quite simple and a few years out of date, but it seems to at least work. It is a shame that none of the Boost-ified GUI libraries seem to have caught on, or at least been carried on.

Visual C++ Orcas

Recently public betas for the next version of Visual Studio.NET Orcas (v9.0) were made available. It is possible to get hold of the free Express versions.

You can download Visual C++ Orcas here. And all the other Express versions can be accessed here.

The C++ compiler with Orcas is a bug fix of the one available with v8.0 (fixing over 180 bugs). The new rewritten compiler will be available in the version after Orcas.

The Visual C++ Team Blog can be read here.

OpenGL on Vista

Even though Windows Vista has been out a few months the myth that OpenGL is being degraded is still being perpetuated. Even though it was debunked what seems like at least a year ago the story just seems to have legs.

Anyway to re-emphasise that all is well in the land of OpenGL they have promoted the article about OpenGL on Vista to their frontpage. Obviously support is still not as robust as the XP implementation, but then again most drivers are lacking at the moment (due to the recency of the release).

C++ Interview Questions

I've been scouring the Internet for the best way to interview C++ developers. I'm new at the whole process but I do like finding out what other people have learnt, so maybe I can miss out some of the initial mis-steps.

Having technical questions to ask isn't the only part, but I did find some quite intersting C++ ones here and here. The thing about these questions is that they are more to start a technical discussion than give a 100% accurate answer.

The best resource I found was more discussion based, where people reveal their own techniques to find the right candidates. It can be read here.

More C++

The ASL project is run by Adobe where it is an attempt to create a cross-platform GUI library. It uses pure C++ with many advanced concepts being used. The GIL (Generic Image Library) part of the project was recently accepted into the Boost project.

The ASL Wiki has a fair amount of interesting information. On the Supplementary Documentation page there is some interesting links, especially the coding guidelines information.

The Papers and Presentations page has some interesting C++ tidbits.

Some interesting C++ articles

On osnews there is a story linking to some articles about C++. These articles cover C++ polymorphism and leveraging vector processing capabilities of modern processors with C++.

The polymorphism articles cover the use of templates to define interfaces and avoid inheritance. It all looks very COM like... There should be performance gains with this approach due to the lack of real vtables and the ability for the compiler to optimise much better due to the code being static at compile time. Although, who knows how much gain there will be without proper testing.

The other article is about using vector processing units to speed up computation. The article says that this is not a cross-platform solution but I think there must be some vector processing interfaces out there for C++ (I just can't remember any off the top of my head).

KDE desktop news

With the release of KDE4 planned for October the KDE development is certainly motoring along.

• kdesvn is covered in the KDE app of the month.
• For anyone that can read German there is a new KDevelop book available.
• There is now a page for KDevelop 4.0.
• More details of the new Dolphin file manager are covered in a first look article.

Sabayon Linux Video

There is a great video of Sabayon Linux in action in this article.

One day I will get the eye candy working on my own graphics card, but it is still pretty good without the 3D goodness in Compiz/Beryl.

Death By Powerpoint

For all those people who have considered hara-kiri whilst being attacked with Powerpoint presentations it is official that it is not good for brains.

Visual C++ Orcas Feature Specifications

The next version of Visual Studio is looming over the horizon now. Appearing on one of the Microsoft blogs are the changes being lined up for Visual C++ and MFC.

You can see the post here.

The standards conformance looks to have some more improvements, which is always welcome.

There is a speed up to the builds by utilising multi-processor computers to build as many object files concurrently as possible. Should be very useful for people with massive projects, unfortunately not for people who work with lots of libraries that can already build concurrently at the project level.

The MFC improvements are also welcome since they transparently give more Vista compatibility and features. More details about the MFC updates for Vista common controls can be read here.

There are a lot of CLR updates but that doesn't vaguely interest me. Luckily there looks to be enough improvements in vanilla C++ to keep people happy. Plus I haven't worked my way through all the features and quirks in VS2005!