Marc,

In fact, that's an interesting question, perhaps for those 
of you who used to use Blackbox but have since moved onto 
something else (assuming that you are still subscribed!)... 
is there something that you're using now that you think 
is better, or something that's "good enough"? 

Marc

This has been an interesting thread. I still monitor this list in hopes that BB and CP will thrive now that it is open source. I had to abandon it after it lost its cross-platform support. My applications must run Windows and Mac OS X. Linux would be OK, but my users don't demand it. Lack of Mac OS X was the deal breaker.

I evaluated Java, which is cross platform, but slow. The something "good enough" that I settled on was Qt from Trolltech headquartered in Oslo. The language is C++, which I have a love/hate relationship with, in contrast to Component Pascal, which I have a love relationship with. The thing that makes Qt pleasant to work with is not only the class library Trolltech supplies, but also the metacompiler -- a pre-processor that implements a nice "signal and slot" mechanism on top of the gui widgets. It is an elegant and conceptually clean mechanism for programming the gui. The API is so extensive that you rarely have to use C++ primitives, in which case bounds checking is provided and garbage collection is automatic. It is dual licensed -- free and open source for personal and educational use but with payment required for commercial use -- with support for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It also comes with Qt designer, a drag-and-drop gui builder that outputs the user interface in an intermediate XML format that then gets compiled into the necessary C++ code. There is a large support group. Developers generate from 1000 to 2000 messages per month.

BB and CP are still technically superior to anything else out there. I wish I could use them. Maybe some day I will be able to again.

Cheers,
Stan

J. Stanley Warford
Professor of Computer Science
Pepperdine University
Malibu, CA 90263
Stan.Warford@pepperdine.edu
310-506-4332