OpenEuphoria

Re: Unified libraries to allow porting code to other oses

• Posted by _tom (admin) May 27, 2015
• 2474 views

Here is my thinking about graphical applications.

UI (User Interface) selection guide.

(1) Graphical Software: native, adopted, independent.

Native is "what comes with the operating system."

• For windows: what Microsoft gives you.
• For unix: GTK, QT, Enlightenment.

Advantages: nothing extra has to be installed, native look and feel.

Adopted is "what you add to make native graphics workable."

• For windows it could be wxWidgets, IUP, maybe GTK
• For unix it could be wxWidgets, IUP.
• Unix also allows a GTK system to have QT and others.

Advantages: UI becomes easier to program, can be multiplatform.
Disadvantage: extra software to install.

Independent is "your own graphical software."

• For windows: Java, Redy.
• For unix: Java, (? Redy).

Advantages: can be easy to program, can be multiplatform.
Disadvantages: extra software to install, unique look and feel.

(2) Toolkit: programmer interface to graphical software.

Bare metal or program graphics directly.

Painful...don't do it.

Toolkit is paired with graphical software.

Choice of graphics & toolkit becomes a matter of personal choice.

(3) IDE: UI layout program.

windows

• native: almost mandatory to have IDE

unix

• can program euGTK without IDE, can use Glade if desired

(4) Final considerations: size, complexity, personal choice.

Conclusion

You will never get one "true" UI for any system since there are too many subjective choices.

Tom's Experiment

Rename EWG|tinEWG to eWui (Euphoria Widget User Interface). This allows for eTui (Euphoria Text User Interface) which could be a clean-up of existing I|O routines and documentation.

Here is my windows experiment for creating a UI application.

Pick tinEWG as the toolkit: native graphics (no extra installation), toolkit, IDE, small and managable for a beginner.

The idea is to have a database format for the IDE that can be edited directly and uses a universal syntax (see Jean-Marc unified libraries, see Ryan Redy )

First example from EWG would look like this:

sequence ui = 
{   { "window", "WinHwnd" }, 
    { "title", "eWui -- the First program" }, 
    { "icon", "T.ICO" }, 
    -- children to window follow  
    {  
      { 
        { "Button", "button1" }, 
        { "title", "Info" }, 
        { "click", ` 

                   InfoMsg("Programmed in Euphoria with eWui Toolkit","eWui") 
                   ` }, 

        {} -- button has no children 
      } 
    }   
}  

Second example from EWG would look like this:

sequence ui = 
{"""Window = "WinHwnd", 

    Title = "eWui -- Two Buttons", 
    Icon = "EuWinGui.ICO", 
    WindowType = NoSysWin, 
    -- example has two children 
 """, { 

        {"""Button = button1, 

            Title = Close, 
            Position = `10, 10` 
            Click = `if AskMsg("Are you sure you want to quit?","eWui") then 

                        exit 
                     end if 
                    `, 

         """, {} 

         }, 
         {"""Button = button2, 

            Title = About, 
            Position = `145, 10`, 
            Click = `InfoMsg("A simple window with two buttons.\nCreated with eWui","eWui -- about" )`             
           """, {} 

          } 
       } 
}   

Writing a program to convert from the database to a working EWG|tinEWG program was not difficult--it worked. It may be possible to use this information to output a GTK program. I have not yet tried to modify the existing IDE to output in this format.

_tom