RedyCode - new features
- Posted by ryanj Apr 28, 2016
- 3024 views
Good news! The next release is almost redy! There are major improvements to RedyCode and RedyLib. I have a few more details to finish and API documentation to write, then i'll release the source in a few weeks. Perhaps it's a little early to make this announcement, but i'm so excited, i just can help it! Haha
This new set of features takes Redy in the direction of making GUI programming easier by providing all the common features that you probably need, so you don't have to waste time writing a bunch of code that has nothing to do with the purpose of writing your application in the first place!
- Redylib reorganization - i made a few changes to the redylib folder and file structure so that it will hopefully be easier to "include" successfully, as well as be able to specify which version of redylib your program is using.
- RedyCode Project design improvements make it easier to configure paths to Euphoria, includes, project folder, etc.
- Actions Library - this as a very important new feature. It provides a way to manage commands that a user can initiate (by menus, tool buttons, key presses, etc.) or macro/script engines can call. Actions are defined with icons, labels, descriptions, and other properties. Actions can be undone (if you write the code necessary to undo data changes
) When you build menus and toolbars, each item is linked to an action, so no gui event handlers are required for them. Even enabling/disabled menu or tools items is easy, or changing lists of values. This greatly reduces the amount of code you need to write for your main window. I will write documentation and examples of how to use this important new feature.
- Improved Menus can now have icons next to each item. Menus are easier to create with the new actions system.
- Customizable Toolbars! There is now a built-in toolbar system and a Customize Toolbars dialog that is very easy to include in your application. To add toolbars to your app, you only need to define a default set of toolbars, which the user can modify or reset back to as desired. The dialog shows a list of defined actions which you can add to toolbars.
- Default Icon Set included! I embedded the "Tango" icons (commonly used in Linux) in a .e file as sequences. It is very easy to assign icons to actions.
- Image transparency and effects have been added to the graphics library. Images can now be drawn with a specified transparent color. There is also a function that can apply effects to any image. For example, menu or tool button icons can be drawn with a greyed-out effect to indicate disabled actions.
- Windows automatically remember their positions! You don't even need to write any extra code, they just remember. Of course, you can do some things to modify this behavior (disable remembering, remember size only, set default position and size, etc.)
- Application Config System makes it very easy to store user preferences, settings, etc. The toolbar settings and window positions are automatically stored in the application's default config file, which is automatically generated in the same folder as the app's exw/exe file.
- Tabs in main window are very easy to manage if you need multiple views. Tabs can have "read-only" and "modified" flags on them.
- Built-in "confirm_exit" action automatically asks the user to confirm exiting the application if any tabs are marked "modified". This behavior can be customized.
- A Standard Application Template is used for creating new projects. It makes it very easy to get started. It includes some common dialogs that you can customize: Help, Preferences, Startup Tips, About. There are more dialogs included in redylib that you can use, too.
- Redy finally works on Wine! Popup menu windows were broken for a long time. I finally fixed some window event handler bugs so they work now. It isn't true linux support, but at least there is a way to run Redy on linux through Wine.
Forked into: Application config file location
