My D aka Mars Wish-List Framework for 2005 / 2006.

Below is a list of the things, inwhich I sat down on the 1st of January 2005 and imagined what I'd like to see happen for D in 2005 / 2006, and so drew the above graphic depiction. Going forward, I'd like to update this page by adding links to new projects that people are working on in these areas.

1. The mirrored Ds [center].
   1. To see the D v1.0 complier released.
   2. For both the Windows and Linux versions to finally become balanced equals.
   
   
2. A DIDE [upper left].
   1. To have a standard IDE with a callable debugger (maintained by D users).
      
      
      • Shawn Liu the original author of DIDE which he retired, has posted on 22.Mar.05 that he has written a new D IDE call "Elephant" that's ready for testing, which can be found here: Elephant v0.33 (no longer in development), and now Poseidon v0.21
        
        
   2. Which has the ability load and save a project / namespace.
   3. And of course to have keyword syntax hightlighting.
   
   
3. Graphic tools for D UI creation [upper right].
   1. Would be nice to have graphic UI tools written in D for D.
   2. Have a common graphic framework interface wrapper, so Windows GDI, OpenGL, or DirectX APIs could be chosen.
      
      
      • Christopher E. Miller's DFL (D Forms Library) v0.92 - windowing library that interfaces the with Windows' Win32 API.
        
        
      • Ben Hinkle's MinWin a "Minimal Window toolkit" that's a cross-platform GUI toolkit for D, which supports backend toolkits for Windows, Motif and GTK.
      
      
   3. Maybe even have a resource editor for icons, cursors, menus, and such.
   
   
4. Better Database support for D [mid right].
   1. Have a number of Database interfaces to common APIs for D.
      
      
      • Jeremy Cowgar's D DBI v0.15 - a database independent interface for the D with current drivers for SqlLite v3.x , MySQL, and PostgreSQL.
      
      
   2. To have a Database Application that acts as a Version Source Safe for D code, which could interact with the IDE (good for larger projects).
   
   
5. Improved support for linking in static .LIB, and stronger support for Dynamic Librarys [bottom].
   1. To have easier to use "Make" and "Build" tools / scripts.
      
      
      • Derek Parnell's Bud v3.04 - a tool for building D executables and libraries
      
      
   2. A way do see if a .LIB is in COFF or OMF format.
   3. A way to call and use Classes within a .DLL.
   
   
6. A standard D Template Library [mid left].
   1. For Matthew Wilson's DTL (D Template Library) to reach v1.0 this year.
      From Walter's post 3rd March 2005: "...DTL is probably going to be a D v2.0 feature."
   2. To have Ben Hinkle's MinTL v2.7.1: (Minimal Template Library) which exists now, to becoming a part of the DTL above (which is happening, as I understand it).
   
   

It does sound a lot like I'm wishing for a Visual Studio for D of sorts, to write D Applications. An idea of using a IDE as the main application, which can use other support applications, either as stand-alone executables and / or as true plug-in type applications. "Only time will tell just how good a Dream this will become! But it does seem like there are many others who do share in such a dream."