1. cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
- Posted by cense <cense at MAIL.RU>
Oct 01, 2000
-
Last edited Oct 02, 2000
I was just cruising around the internet the other day looking for a IDE for
linux when i came across a library called "Amulet". Amulet is a free, public
domain cross platform C++ class library that allows for generic GUI creation
across:
- all X11 ( that means XFree86 on linux and others )
- Microsoft Win95/98 and NT
- Macintosh
Because it is public domain, commercial software can be produced with it
royalty free and there are basically no restrictions on it.
Im not too familar with wxWindows and i dont know what platforms it supports
but i think Amulet is at least worth a look as well. It just might be a
better solution for our *euphorian* needs, but i wont make a judgement
considering i dont know wxWindows.
Again, this is just a suggestions and i encourage anyone that is interested
(this would be you David Cuny i assume) in this subject to visit the Amulet
web site:
--
evil, corruption and bad taste
^cense
2. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
- Posted by David Cuny <dcuny at LANSET.COM>
Oct 01, 2000
-
Last edited Oct 02, 2000
cense wrote:
> Amulet is a free, public domain cross platform C++ class
> library that allows for generic GUI creation across:
>
> - all X11 ( that means XFree86 on linux and others )
> - Microsoft Win95/98 and NT
> - Macintosh
According to my favorite GUI toolkit page at
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/7184/guitool.html
Amulet gets a rank of "good" (which beats most tookits) and says it's a
"research-oriented toolkit from CMU. native look and feel. High-level
support for interactive interfaces: Direct Manipulation Behaviors, Undo,
Animation, etc. original project at CMU completed and No longer supported.
However, another group has picked up development as OpenAmulet."
OpenAmulet is at:
http://www.openip.org/oa_overview.html
I didn't get a chance to read it in depth, and there aren't any screenshots,
either.Interfacing with C++ libraries can be problematic, since generally
you have to derive new classes when you create new controls - something
that's problematic when it comes to building a non-C++ interface.
-- David Cuny
3. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
>I know about the C++ Object Oriented part being hard to wrap up properly.
I wouldn't say it's hard, I'd say it's freaking impossible (just about).
f.x.
// No, I don't know C++, I'm just guessing here..
class blah
{
public void do_something();
}
How would you ever get hold of do_something() using Euphoria's C interface?
I suppose, under Windows you could try some fancy stuff using the dll
functions in the Win API (get the address of 'blah'. figure out at wich
offset the address of 'do_something()' is stored. use some asm to push all
parameters. call 'do_something()'.). This would however
a) be slow.
b) take a lot of effort.
Maybe I've missed some better way of doing this. If so, I'd be intersted to
see your suggestion.
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4. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
- Posted by Kenneth Rhodes <hermanhesse at EXCITE.COM>
Oct 01, 2000
-
Last edited Oct 02, 2000
Isn't WxWindows also in C++?
> Interfacing with C++ libraries can be problematic, since generally
> you have to derive new classes when you create new controls - something
> that's problematic when it comes to building a non-C++ interface.
>
> -- David Cuny
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5. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
mic wrote:
>> I know about the C++ Object Oriented part being
>> hard to wrap up properly.
>
> I wouldn't say it's hard, I'd say it's freaking impossible
> (just about).
When you write a wrapper, you need to use a C++ compiler. You define the
interface something like this:
extern "C" __declspec(dllexport) blah_do_something( blah self ) {
self->do_something()
}
Here's the rundown:
[ extern "C" ]
This prevents that C++ compiler from mangling the routine name, so it's
visible in the DLL. Otherwise, you have no guarantee what the routine name
will look like once the C++ compiler gets done with it.
[ __declspec(dllexport) ]
Only needed on the Windows platform. This tells the compiler and linker that
this routine is going to be exported (visible) in the DLL.
[ blah_do_something ]
The class name is prefixed to the function, to make it unique from all those
other 'do_something' routines in the other classes. Actually, you probably
want to name it something like 'wrap_blah_do_something' out of sheer
paranoia.
[ (blah this) ]
In C++, you can just call the routine like this:
someBlah.my_routine()
and the object is implicitly passed. We have to make this explicit in our
interface.
[ self->do_something() ]
This is the actual call. We take the object that we passed, and call the
routine.
It's actually a pretty mechanical process, once you've done it a couple of
times. There's actually a program called SWIG that is designed to process
C/C++ libraries, and generate this sort of wrapper automatically. I've
written a fairly simple module to SWIG that will generate the source code
for DLLs as well as the Euphoria code to link to the compiled DLL.
Unfortunately, I can no longer get my code to work properly - calls to stdio
cause the program to choke. I blame the Borland compiler, and after
struggling with it for a while, gave up and have rewritten the SWIG code in
Euphoria. It doesn't handle as large a class of C/C++ code, but it's decent.
It was going well, but I got sidetracked into writing a yacc-like front end
to a LL1 grammar parser...
I hope this clarifies things.
-- David Cuny
6. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
On Sun, 01 Oct 2000, David Cuny wrote:
>> According to my favorite GUI toolkit page at
>>
>> http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/7184/guitool.html
>>
>> Amulet gets a rank of "good" (which beats most tookits) and says it's a
>> "research-oriented toolkit from CMU. native look and feel. High-level
>> support for interactive interfaces: Direct Manipulation Behaviors, Undo,
>> Animation, etc. original project at CMU completed and No longer supported.
>> However, another group has picked up development as OpenAmulet."
>>
>> OpenAmulet is at:
>>
>> http://www.openip.org/oa_overview.html
>>
>> I didn't get a chance to read it in depth, and there aren't any screenshots,
>> either.Interfacing with C++ libraries can be problematic, since generally
>> you have to derive new classes when you create new controls - something
>> that's problematic when it comes to building a non-C++ interface.
>>
>> -- David Cuny
I know about the C++ Object Oriented part being hard to wrap up properly.
You are the Guru in this area, not me, so ultimately you know whats better. It
was just a simple suggestion that i came about the other day. No harm in just
asking i guess.
--
evil, corruption and bad taste
^cense
7. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
Kenneth Rhodes wrote:
> Isn't WxWindows also in C++?
Yes. The issue with the C++ toolkits isn't that you can't write interfaces
to them - see my prior e-mail for details. The problem is when they rely on
extending virtual functions to add functionality (like Java's Swing does).
For example, imagine you had a PushButton class in a C++ library. The coder
was nice enough to create hooks to events, such as onPush:
class PushButton {
public:
virtual onPush();
}
If you want a pushbutton that prints "Hello" when you push it, you just
derive a new PushButton class:
class HelloPushButton: public PushButton {
public:
onPush() { puts( "Hello, World!\n" ); }
}
Wrapping something like this is a royal pain. It's possible, but you
basically have derive classes for the interfaces, and put hooks in them:
class wrap_PushButton: public PushButton {
public:
onPush() { /* callback hook goes here */ };
setOnPushHook( ... ) { /* set hook for onPush */ };
}
Bleah!
In wxWindows, you have a top-level class called wxApp that needs hooks like
this. But you can create lower level objects and attach callback code to
them *without* having to go in hand manually adding the hook code. This
makes it a lot easier to work with than most C++ libraries (like V).
Plus, there are a number of languages (like wxPython) that have built
interfaces to wxWindows, so I know that it's possible to do so. That doesn't
mean that I personally have the skill to do it, however. The more I work on
this project, the more it feels like I'm treading water at best. 
-- David Cuny
8. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
>When you write a wrapper, you need to use a C++ compiler. You define the
>interface something like this:
>
> extern "C" __declspec(dllexport) blah_do_something( blah self ) {
> self->do_something()
> }
>
Indeed.
Though I prefer to call dll functions directly from Euphoria and not via
these kinds of "slave" functions (wich I why I think that pure C is the
dialect of choise when writing DLL:s).
Btw, should you really declare blah_do_something() as "C"? As far as I know,
Euphoria uses the stdcall convention when calling C functions..
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9. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
On Sun, 1 Oct 2000 21:39:11 -0600, cense <cense at MAIL.RU> wrote:
>I was just cruising around the internet the other day looking for a IDE for
>linux
cense:
If you want a IDE for Linux go here:
http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/~sho/rho/rhide-beta.html
Bernie
10. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
mic wrote:
> Btw, should you really declare blah_do_something() as "C"?
> As far as I know, Euphoria uses the stdcall convention when
> calling C functions..
This has nothing to do with calling conventions.
The 'extern "C"' declaration prevents the C++ compiler from mangling the
name of the routine in the DLL. Similar to Euphoria, C++ will _mangle_
routine names to prevent namespace collisions. This bit of code prevents
that from happening.
-- David Cuny
11. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
On Mon, 02 Oct 2000, Bernie wrote:
>> On Sun, 1 Oct 2000 21:39:11 -0600, cense <cense at MAIL.RU> wrote:
>>
>> >I was just cruising around the internet the other day looking for a IDE for
>> >linux
>> cense:
>> If you want a IDE for Linux go here:
>>
>> http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/~sho/rho/rhide-beta.html
>>
>> Bernie
I know all about RHIDE, but thanks for the suggestion. I tried it once and it
did not compile and gave up very easily because i was feeling *really* lazy. I
use "moonshine" and "motor". I was just looking for what else is out
there. thanks anyway.
--
evil, corruption and bad taste
^cense
12. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
- Posted by Jeffrey Fielding <JJProg at CYBERBURY.NET>
Oct 02, 2000
-
Last edited Oct 03, 2000
On Mon, 2 Oct 2000, cense wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Oct 2000, Bernie wrote:
> >> On Sun, 1 Oct 2000 21:39:11 -0600, cense <cense at MAIL.RU> wrote:
> >>
> >> >I was just cruising around the internet the other day looking for a IDE
> >> >for
> >> >linux
> >> cense:
> >> If you want a IDE for Linux go here:
> >>
> >> http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/~sho/rho/rhide-beta.html
> >>
> >> Bernie
>
> I know all about RHIDE, but thanks for the suggestion. I tried it once and it
> did not compile and gave up very easily because i was feeling *really* lazy. I
> use "moonshine" and "motor". I was just looking for what else is out
> there. thanks anyway.
>
>
/me likes emacs - of course, it's not exactly an IDE... but you could
probably make it one with a bit of scripting. There's an amusing t-shirt
they have at thinkgeek.com: (imagining a world where emacs is bad):
"Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?"
"Because they use vi, son. We use emacs."
Jeff Fielding
13. Re: cross platform GUI suggestions for Euphoria
- Posted by cense <cense at mail.ru>
Oct 02, 2000
-
Last edited Oct 03, 2000
On Mon, 02 Oct 2000, Jeffrey Fielding wrote:
>> On Mon, 2 Oct 2000, cense wrote:
>>
>> > On Mon, 02 Oct 2000, Bernie wrote:
>> > >> On Sun, 1 Oct 2000 21:39:11 -0600, cense <cense at MAIL.RU> wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >> >I was just cruising around the internet the other day looking for a IDE
>> > >> >for
>> > >> >linux
>> > >> cense:
>> > >> If you want a IDE for Linux go here:
>> > >>
>> > >> http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/~sho/rho/rhide-beta.html
>> > >>
>> > >> Bernie
>> >
>> > I know all about RHIDE, but thanks for the suggestion. I tried it once and
>> > it
>> > did not compile and gave up very easily because i was feeling *really*
>> > lazy. I
>> > use "moonshine" and "motor". I was just looking for what else is out
>> > there. thanks anyway.
>> >
>> >
>> /me likes emacs - of course, it's not exactly an IDE... but you could
>> probably make it one with a bit of scripting. There's an amusing t-shirt
>> they have at thinkgeek.com: (imagining a world where emacs is bad):
>> "Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?"
>> "Because they use vi, son. We use emacs."
>>
>> Jeff Fielding
Nice shirt. I myslef dont use vi or emacs im a pico/nano kinda guy, i like
their simplicity and ease of use. Of course their tiny size halps them fit on
a boot disk very well :)
--
evil, corruption and bad taste
^cense
