Developing graphical user interfaces using graphical
environments like the X window system
provides the programmer with high
flexibility, much functionality, but often big confusion as
well. Facing thousands of pages of documentation, most
programmers decide to leave the programming of graphical
user interfaces to experts. Even these experts
often use only parts of the functionality the window system
offers, and above all, developing a graphical user interface
is a time consuming task.
While everybody wants a graphical interface for his applications, as it makes the handling easier and reduces the learning effort, nobody likes implementing applications with graphical interfaces. A programmer who implements a graphical user interface by hand has to write or change some interface code, has to compile and test it. Afterwards, he often finds out that the changes have had the wrong impact on the interface. The programmer has to handle numerous variables and statements containing widget initialization, configuration and geometry information. The resulting application code mainly implements the interface, and the functionality of the application is thrust into the background. Studies have shown that about 50 to 80 per cent of the code of an application with a graphical interface are used to implement the graphical interface.
The introduction of OOP techniques for interface building
makes the implementation of graphical interfaces much
easier. Toolkits like Interviews[#Linton88#
Harry Beker
Thu Feb 29 18:06:38 MET 1996