wisgetwas wondering what widget in gtk (using gtkmm) could be used to implemented the movable button looking thing in the picture. and also the dotted line.
dotted line
edit: the widget is supposed to be able to move left and right along the time-track to be able to set the play bounds. Here is a video showing how it looks like in after effects. From sescond 37 is how the behaviour for it supposed to be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxXevteeumg
edit: from what it looks like there isnt a specific widget which could simplify this. However a regular button can be used and then implementing a method for its drage using the various signal handlers associated with a Gtk button
There is no widget that does this (see the widget gallery).
You can, however, add custom widgets using Cairo. In the official Gtkmm book, there is an example for creating a custom clock widget using the Gtk::DrawingArea. The Gtk::DrawingArea offers a lot of signals which you can connect to.
I have created my own widgets in the past using this and it worked just fine. However, it was a lot of work because:
Cairo lacks good documentation. Understanding the philosophy behind this library is a lot of work, often empirical.
It can be hard to acheive acceptable performance using Cairo. One has to be really careful in how the drawing of the widget is performed. There is often a naive way to do it, which is clearer in the code, but devastating in terms of performance (it often involves useless redraws on the CPU).
Goal: draw a flowchart which contains non-Latin1 symbols.
Problem: GraphViz does not provide all node shapes necessary for drawing a flowchart (e.g. "Document", "Predefined Process" etc). Fortunately, a person named Jason Brazile created a nice library of missing shapes. However, it works only when using the PostScript driver (dot -Tps).
There are two basic PostScript drivers in GraphViz: built-in driver which does not support Unicode, and Cairo which does, but apparently does not support external PostScript procedures (the user-defined PS shapes are absent in the resulting layout).
Question: How do I use UTF-8 labels and flowchart shapes at the same time?
I asked the GraphViz developers about this and looks like the answer is that there is no way to do that:
We looked at this problem years ago. The native graphviz -Tps
Postscript driver does not have any custom font loading capabilites.
As mentioned here: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Unicode-HOWTO-5.html
rendering utf-8 fonts in Postscript is a do-it-yourself job. It would
probably take weeks or months of work, but if you want to try to make
this modification to graphviz, it might be possible to appropriate
code from one of the other tools mentioned in that website. (Make
sure it is non-GPL code, otherwise it can't be distributed!)
Another option would be to modify the cairopango driver to render text
on top of a user shape after it is loaded. (Do we not already support
this? It seems obvious.) Then either find a way to render external
graphviz PS shapes after they are loaded and copy the rendered images
into the cairopango canvas (hey we already import ghostscript into
graphviz) or convert the custom PS shapes externally into images that
can be loaded by the cairopango driver. This might not take as much
time.
Either way, it will take an expert C programmer.
Probably none of us have much time to work on this (our time would be
better used trying to get funding to support the project in a more
general way, but we all have other jobs now) but you could offer a
bounty on bountysource and see what happens....
Referring to the kind of look of the images seen on this site - http://sl.dream-theme.com/html/albums-light.html (I'm in no way involved with this WP theme, just providing an example). The author is using jRaphael to create "path cuts" which is a nice and browser-safe approach, but I'd like to avoid including an additional library solely for that purpose.
very basic:
http://dabblet.com/gist/2874826
uses css pseudo elements to mask the image (pretty descent browser support -- will render as a square image in legacy browsers, probably nbd?)
If shadows / borders / things are needed you could add and additional wrapper to fake the slanted borders using more pseudo elements or a manipulated (transformed) box, or something.
I tried to sign up, but I was unable; perhaps a problem from my side. Hopefully I'll get an answer as anonymous.
I apologize for the grammar/syntax, but English isn't my native language.
Recently I lost my job, so I have enough spare time to try something fun. I decided to create a simple text RPG game for me and some friends. It will very close to the board games like Talisman, Dungeon Run, and HeroQuest, using dice and a simple attribute/skill system. So no 3d graphics. The only 2d element, if I decide to include it, will be a map
that will allow the hero to move between locations. Currently I'm using Windows XP SP3, for the game I use wxDev-C++, and although cross platform would be cool, I don't really care.
I have some experience in C++ (currently using wxDev-C++), but I'm far from being called an expert or even a great programmer. I was about to start writing parts of the code, but I decided to check if creating a GUI for the game is possible. In some forums, many suggested I use Qt, CEGUI or wxWidgets, but most examples I saw are grey boxes that are
indifferent at best, when I want something that fits better in a fantasy setting. I don't claim I would do better, but I want a GUI that is more fantasy related.
What I want from the GUI:
1. A "cool" Gui with decent graphics. I could even create an image to serve as a mask in Photoshop, but the GUI builder will have to support imported images.
2. A relatively large textbox in the middle (with a scrollbar) that will display die rolls, damage and options.
3. The ability to display dynamically values (like the change in the health after each action without requiring to refresh manually)
4. Display an icon or a small image of the character in the area where I display stats/abilities.
5. Open new windows created with tha same GUI builder to allocate points, buy/sell things and open a map.
About the map in the game: I decided to create a map in photoshop. When the hero decides to move to another location, a new window will open showing the map. I thought of 2 possible ways to move between locations: 1) Create hotspots on the image and select one by clicking on the name of the location.(I dare not think about the complexity of this so we
move to idea #2) and 2) Have the image as a backgroung to a grid with vertical and horizontal coordinates. When the hero selects a new area to visit, he clicks on the area, but what he really does is click on the grid, which returns the two values (x,y) of the location and informs the game about the area the hero wants to visit.
Yeah, yeah, I know it's too much, so what I'm most interested in are the 1-3. I know that even if they are possible, it will propably take forever, but as I said I have spare time, and I like learning new things. I apologize for the size of the post, but I decided to post as many info as possible so you know what I want.
If any of you has used Qt, CEGUI or wxWidgets could you tell which covers most of my criteria? I saw some great stuff build with CEGUI, but I don't know if it is too hard to learn?
Thank in advance.
I know my answer comes pretty late, I only recently started using stackoverflow fairly recently, but maybe this response will help anybody.
CEGUI fully supports skinning widgets using XML. Our CEED editor (WYSIWYG) fully supports layout editing, but the skinning editor (LNF editor) is not finished as of now (11.11.2014), the development version supports exchanging images however and changing sizes and proportions, but more advanced adjustments have to be done in XML.
CEGUI has an imageset editor, fully supported by the CEED editor. Creating imagesets (sets of named subimages, with position and dimension inside a big texture atlas) is supported there. Additionally there is a way to create imagesets from just a bunch of jpg/png/... files using a tool. You would have to ask for specifics in the forum though because it is not integrated into CEED yet.
So basically with CEGUI you are free to make whatever fantasy GUI you want. Skinning simple elements like buttons and progress bars isn't much work in XML anyways. Without the finished editor, some more advanced widgets are more work to skin, but many skins have already been created done this way and some of them are even publically available in the forum and in the CEGUI stock files.
StaticText widgets supports what you want, you can even use images in there or change fonts and colours in the text if you want. Scrollbars are supported too.
I am not sure what you mean by this. You have to specify this.
A simple "Generic/Image" widget is available in CEGUI for this purpose. You can use precreated images or even RTT textures.
You can create and destroy windows in CEGUI without issues.
Regarding the map: I m not sure what you mean, but getting the position of a click in respect to an image (representing the map) is possible in CEGUI.
CEGUI is not particularly hard to learn. There is always the forums and the chat if you got questions. For an Open Source project it is quite well documented so if you read all of the API docu, and look at the supplied samples in the sample browser, you should already get quite far. And for everything additional there is the forum (search), the IRC chat and a community wiki (mind the targeted versions of an article there though)
For a project like yours, CEGUI seems perfectly suited (this is what it was created for in the first place). Qt is not really optimal for games for numerous reasons. wxWidgets I have never used.
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I'm a blind college student who is taking an introduction to programming class that focuses on user interface design. The class is using Processing, which is completely inaccessible. I'm looking for a language that will allow me to create GUI's without drag and drop and hopefully be smart enough to do most of the layout without forcing me to specify control positions in pixels.
I know Perl, Java, C/C++, c#, and HTML. I was considering creating HTA applications. My only requirements are that the language must run under MS Windows, and must not use SWING or GTK as the underlying toolkit.
I would say that xaml would be a good choice:
Pixel manipulation is not needed
Item functionality in code behind
Can add pixels changing for control
later on
There is a lot of documentation on
how to use it
Maybe if you give us an idea of what you will need the language for we can give you better suggestions.
Speaking as a blind programmer:
C# + WinForms: You can either create the code by hand and use layout managers or calculate the sizes in your head, or if you're using the JAWS screen reader then there are scripts which will help you in the WinForms designer.
C# + WPF: Here you define your UI in XML, but it is more complex to get your head around. Certainly look at this as it is a very nice solution. the other problem with WPF at the moment is that not all screen readers support this newer technology.
Jamal Mazrui at www.EmpowermentZone.com has created something called "Layout By Code", but I have no experience with this.
HTML+Javascript would be nice, but I doubt it'd be allowed in your course.
WXWidgets: I don't have a lot of experience with this cross-platform, multi-language UI toolkit, but I believe it has layout managers and is thus used by several blind programmers I know.
Finally, I used to design Win32 resource scripts by hand, calculating sizes in my head (no layout managers). This is certainly achievable if you wanted to take this route.
In summary, WPF's nice, but make sure your screen reader works with this kind of app. The next best alternative is probably WinForms. If you like Layout By Code then use it, but if this is a skill you want for employment, then keep that in mind.
take a look on XAML. I think it could be a good start for both modern Windows and Web UI creators.
Tcl/Tk will do exactly what you want. The pack and grid layout managers are based on logical relative placement of the widgets.
Although the "native" language of Tk is Tcl, many other languages have a Tk binding.
label .l -text "this is a label"
button .b -text 'quit' -command "exit"
pack .l .b
Check out this project on codeplex. It may help you (as an alternative to processing&java)
http://bling.codeplex.com/
ling is a C#-based library for easily programming images, animations, interactions, and visualizations on Microsoft's WPF/.NET. Bling is oriented towards design technologists, i.e., designers who sometimes program, to aid in the rapid prototyping of rich UI design ideas. Students, artists, researchers, and hobbyists will also find Bling useful as a tool for quickly expressing ideas or visualizations. Bling's APIs and constructs are optimized for the fast programming of throw away code as opposed to the careful programming of production code.
Bling as the following features that aid in the rapid prototyping of rich UIs:
* Declarative constraints that maintain dynamic relationships in the UI without the need for complex event handling. For example, button.Width = 100 - slider.Value causes button to shrink as the slider thumb is moved to the right, or grow as it is moved to the left. Constraints have many benefits: they allow rich custom layouts to be expressed with very little code, they are easy animate, and they support UIs with lots of dynamic behavior.
* Simplified animation with one line of code. For example, button.Left.Animate.Duration(500).To = label.Right will cause button to move to the right of label in 500 milliseconds.
* Pixel shader effects without the need to write HLSL code or boilerplate code! For example, canvas.CustomEffect = (input, uv) => new ColorBl(new Point3DBl(1,1,1) - input[uv].ScRGB, input[uv].ScA); defines and installs a pixel shader on a canvas that inverts the canvas's colors. Pixel shading in Bling takes advantage of your graphics card to create rich, pixel-level effects.
* Support for multi-pass bitmap effects such as diffuse lighting.
* An experimental UI physics engine for integrating physics into user interfaces! The physics supported by Bling is flexible, controllable, and easy to program.
* Support for 2.5D lighting.
* A rich library of geometry routines; e.g., finding where two lines intersect, the base of a triangle, the area of triangle, or a point on Bezier curve. These routines are compatible with all of Bling's features; e.g., they can be used in express constraints, pixel shaders, or physical constraints. Bling also provides a rich API for manipulating angles in both degrees and radians.
* And many smaller things; e.g., a frame-based background animation manager and slide presentation system.
* As a lightweight wrapper around WPF, Bling code is completely compatible with conventional WPF code written in C#, XAML, or other .NET languages.
Bling is an open source project created by Sean McDirmid and friends to aid in design rapid prototyping. We used Bling to enhance our productivity and would like to share it with other WPF UI design prototypers.
I'd probably try using C#. It has reasonably friendly interfaces to windows common controls and the like even without making use of Drag and Drop. Just don't make use of the designer and code as normal.
I don't program in Java but I know that Java provides for the programmatic creation of the UI AND provides some wonderful Layout Management components (Native to Java without requiring SWING). I first got exposed to Layout Managers back in the good-old-days of X11 with X Toolkits (anybody remember Motif, OpenLook, HP Open View?) and Java seems to have adopted similar technology.
You can create Windows, Dialogs and Menus all from simple layout managers.
Being sighted myself and not having worked too closely on anything that has ever been audited for accessibility or heavily accessed by blind users, I don't think my answer will be terribly thorough. My first instinct however is to say that some kind of dynamic web server architecture that generates HTML like C#, PHP or ColdFusion is going to fit your description of handling most of the layout for you without requiring that you specify control positions in pixels. There certainly is the availability to specify control positions in pixels via CSS, but it's not required. And I know HTML also has well defined standards for accessibility, whereas I'm not sure what the status is on accessibility standards with other kinds of software.
You could use javascript and html. There's a port of processing to javascript, so you know that it is powerful enough for the things that your class will cover. You can author html without knowing a single thing about what it looks like. In fact that is the preferred way to author html.
The main downside of javascript is not javascript itself, but the browser dom. That is the interface into controlling the html elements. However, a library like jquery, or mootools, or dojo can take care of most of those problems.
As for accessiblity, have a look at WAI ARIA also opera's intro to WAI ARIA.a
WAI ARIA is a way to build rich javascript applications while playing nice with screen readers. It's very cool. I've not seen more work and passion put into making the web stack accessible in any other programming stack.