> Abstraction of GUI detail makes it possible to target multiple disparate
> platforms from a single codebase. You can write apps that are MDI in
Let's see... there are so many subtle and not-so-subtle differences to take care.
> Office 2007 lookalike wannabees may use ribbons. They're hardly standard
> (they're not provided by the native Windows API widget set). The point
No. In Windows 7 ribbons are a standard API - and you may like it or not, but Office always set Windows interface standards well before Windows itself.
> about cross-platform frameworks is that they provide a platform-agnostic
> API for accessing the native widget set of each platform.
There's something contradictory in what you wrote - who cares of an *agnostic* access to the *native set of each platform*? <G> There is the problem that the intersection of those sets is different from its union, and GUIs are much more than a set of widgets.
> ribbon will be part of your app's GUI -- which you can write using
> cross-platform tools if you want -- not something that a framework can
> abstract away.
So what shoud a framework abstract?
> preventing you from refining the result if you want to. VCL doesn't
> offer mastery either.
Well, compare a VCL GUI and a Qt one...
> -- even pleasant -- and doesn't cost the earth. They don't care HOW
> Delphi does it, they care that it works.
Well, now I am very worried... I believed most developers where far better than VB coders, and cared about how Delphi works. Maybe I am wrong.