[IGSTK-Developers] Re: Why FLTK is used in IGSTK?

[Luis Ibanez]

Hi Csaba,

Thanks for your interesting feedback regarding IGSTK.

The main reason why we use and promote FLTK in the
IGSTK examples are:

   1) FLTK is distributed under a BSD-like License
   2) FLTK is a light toolkit.


That being said, please note that you *do not have* to
use FLTK when you use IGSTK. We are also supporting Qt
as a GUI library.

You could also extend IGSTK for other GUIs by extending
the View class. We will be happy to provide you details
on how to write an extension for another GUI if you are
interested in doing so.


Please let us know how you would like to proceed,


    Best Regards,


       Luis


===================
Csaba Csoma wrote:
> Luis,
> 
> I'm a huge fan of VTK/ITK and I really appreciate your work.
> 
> But now when I saw that IGSTK is using/promoting FLTK I must
> ask you: why?
> 
> FLTK is one layer over the operating system, slow, ugly and
> potentially unstable. In my opinion exactly this is the reason
> we don't see any widely used Java application on desktops.
> 
> wxWidgets is so much better (does not reimplement everything)
> and faster, why would anybody use FLTK for real applications?
> 
> I understand the "fast and dirty" solutions with TCL for small
> test applications, but there's no way to create robust application
> in other than C++. And only native controls will look native,
> reimplementing menu/buttons/"File Open" dialog etc. is slowing
> (or stopping) the user acceptance of the application.
> 
> Thank you,
>  Csaba
> 
> 
> Csaba Csoma
> Assoc. Systems Engineer
> ------------------------
> Johns Hopkins University
> 3400  North Charles Str.
> B26 New Engineering Bldg
> Baltimore, MD 21218-2682
> Phone: (410) 516-4991
> mailto:csoma at jhu.edu
> 
>