On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 10:55, Francois Gouget wrote:
OOP:
A lot of the Windows API is exported through DLL entry points and these are not object oriented. Where the Windows API is object oriented is:
OOP in C is not impossible wither... It is harder than it could be, but it is possible....
Wine also has very strong requirements with regards to threading, CPU register usage, exception handling, all of which require very low-level control which negates the advantages high level languages might have in these areas.
The good: * D is specifically intended to support low-level applications. * Built in UTF-8 / UTF-16 / UTF-32 support * Types defines size - an int is always 32-bit * COM support * C-compatibility * Standardized inline assembly * Build-in support for unit-tests, etc. (Will require all the tests to be rewritten in a different way though..)
D still have some issues, such as two incompatible, competing "standard libraries"... Version 2 might be worth considering for some new projects...
Like the D website says: Who D is Not For * Realistically, nobody is going to convert million line C or C++ programs into D. Since D does not compile unmodified C/C++ source code, *D is not for legacy apps*. (However, D supports legacy C API's very well. D can connect directly to any code that exposes a C interface.)
D also specifically drops 16-bit support, which might cause problems for the Win16 / DOS parts of Wine...
I'm not sure how widely gcd/dmd is supported. Will it run on some of Wine(lib)'s rarer platforms? (like MIPS Linux, Itanium Linux, x86/x86_64 Solaris, SPARC Linux, *BSD on unusual platforms, OS X (PowerPC, x86 and x86_64))
Linking to C code from D is obviously supported. I'm not sure how well it is supported in the other direction (crucial for winelib...)
It is not clear if non-Unicode strings are supported... (No non-Unicode char type exist...)
Gert