What programming languages are supported by XFCE plugins? - xfce

What programming languages are supported by XFCE plugins? \

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xfce:
Xfce is based on the GTK+ toolkit.
See gtk.org/language-bindings.
Next, you can search for this:
Together with GtkSocket, GtkPlug provides the ability to embed widgets from one process into another process in a fashion that is transparent to the user.

EDIT: Cleaned up answer a bit and linked to complete GTK+ language binding support (again).
GTK Language Binding Support:
As answered earlier, Xfce is GTK+ and uses that toolkit.
https://www.gtk.org/language-bindings.php
Panel Plugins:
Creating a panel plugin:
Python is supported, along with what GTK+ uses. Whisker (the panel plugin) uses Python, and I believe Orage does as well.
https://wiki.xfce.org/dev/howto/panel_plugins

Related

How to enable any language other than Python?

I recently found out about liclipse and was very excited about its concept (lite eclipse) especially when newly installed Liclipse managed to start up in 5 seconds. But it seems I cannot find how to use it for any of languages listed on the website as it comes only with PyDev perspective and several other Python-related things (e.g. PyDev), but since I am not a Python developer and was looking for nim and Go support I started exploring their documentation but had no success.
So my question is if I should install the plugins for languages I want (e.g. like in standard Eclipse) but that would be odd since Liclipse says it supports those languages out-of-the-box.
I downloaded the latest version of Liclipse from their website and am on Win32 p;latform if it changes anything.
LiClipse has a lightweight editor for those languages (which provides basic syntax highlighting, outline, comment/uncomment and basic code-completion -- i.e.: based on templates), so, if that's enough for you, you should be able to just open the file you want and use the provided editor.
Now, if you require more features for some given language, you can still install another more full-featured plugin to edit it.
Related to the perspective, you should be able to use the Resource Perspective for any language.

OpenCV and the User Interface

I need to do a project on image processing using OpenCV and I am just starting to learn the basics, however I need to know one thing about the User Interface, can I design the UI using the libraries provided by OpenCV ? This includes forms, buttons and event handling or do I need to use some other language for the UI ?
OpenCV provides a highgui library which contains minimum UI functionalities like ShowWindow, Trackbar,Mouse events etc. It is not useful for advanced GUI development.
Check out OpenCV documentation: Link 1, Link 2
And it is expanded by few more functions from qt for support like button etc. Link 3
But for advanced GUI development, OpenCV is integrated with Qt. Qt is very advanced, highly stable framework and it is free and opensource. It is implemented in C++, so easy to use with OpenCV. More interesting thing is that, if you use Python for OpenCV, then Qt also has got python wrapper called PyQt which covers almost all functions of Qt.
You can download Qt from here. Checkout its documentation and wide variety of tutorials. Tutorials are very extensive for Qt. So it is not a difficult thing to learn.
Installation guide for OpenCV and Qt are found here: Link
You can use MFC using Microsoft Visual Studio for opencv ui
Click here! to Know more about MFC.
OpenCVSharp is a great C# wrapper for OpenCV project. Its latest version 2.4.5 uses OpenCV 2.4.0 dlls. Check it out, too.

Is there any framework that allows me to develop applications for Qt and GTK?

I am thinking about something that would allow to develop applications independent of the GUI library, but allow Qt and GTK being plugged in as needed.
I'd just use Qt. It includes a Gtk-like style, mimics Gtk standard dialogs and even uses Gtk file dialogs if run under Gnome, so basically it integrates itself into Gtk as good as anything (except Gtk of course), or at least it integrates itself better into Gtk than Gtk does into Qt.
You can try to use wxWidgets but you tend to get "lowest common denominator" if you go that route. Your better bet is to design your software such that you can plug in an implementation of the necessary "views" in the desired toolkit, and keep your core UI toolkit independant.
Obviously this is more work, but if there is a strong business need, then so be it.
I don't know of any framework doing something like that (I don't know how it could possibly be done without suffering from a heavy "lowest-common-denominator" syndrome), but I do "cross toolkit" development (applications that use more than one GUI toolkit) and I wrote an article about why and how to do it:
http://www.hardcoded.net/articles/cross-toolkit-software.htm
You can try Tk, which supports themes. There is a tile-qt and tile-gtk theme. There is a 2010 Google Summer of Code project to improve these themes. And, of course, when you use Tk you also get support for Windows and OSX out of the box.
Qt is a framework, it uses GTK underneath (at least on Unix).
There was a mobile toolkit that let you write everything in JS but compiled to the native code on each platform. I forget the name but it was a victim of the iPhone lockdown.

How to decide GUI Framework for desktop application project

I am working on a new small utility desktop application but I am not really able to choose the GUI framework to use. I have worked on both JAVA,C# and C++, so language is not really a constraint. My criteria are:-
A very well designed architecture, something like QT. It's better if it follows typical C++ design methodologies.
Layout management should be easy, intuitive and not really cumbersome. I hate adjusting pixels on screen.
Its license should be open.
It should look good :)
Mentioned QT seems to comply to all your requirements. QT has "deploy everywhere" attribute, whilst Java needs no deploying at all (it depends on what is use of your utility).
Ad. 2 QT has really convenient GUI designer.
Ad. 3 LGPL. Usually it is enough.
Ad. 4 It is always matter of taste. IMO QT4 looks awesome under linux, but it's windows look'n'feel is correct at best. It's strong point is, that without additional tweaks it almost everywhere looks native.
I've been using Swing, and it works fine. NetBeans (a decent IDE by itself) even supports graphical GUI building.
It's well designed (basically
everything is done with listeners,
functions that are registered for a
certain event). It has bindings, so
you don't have to write code to set
up a value in a text field or read
it out
Layout is not perfect, but
acceptable within NetBeans. It's
WYSIWYG (almost). Look-and-feel can
be changed on the fly.
License is free. Source-code is not
available, I think.
Looks fine on Windows and Linux,
less so on OSX.
You could always try SWT. The advantages of Java with the standard L&F of supported operating systems.
Well designed. Lots of
documentation, and very easy to
develop with. (If you know Swing,
you can pick up SWT in no time.)
I believe layout managers do exist
that support SWT. I'm not positive
about this though, as I typically
don't use layout managers too much.
Uses the Eclipse Public
License. Should meet most of
your requirements.
From Wikipedia on SWT:
SWT is written in Java. To display GUI elements, the SWT implementation accesses the native GUI libraries of the operating system using JNI (Java Native Interface) in a manner that is similar to those programs written using operating system-specific APIs. Programs that call SWT are portable, but the implementation of the toolkit, despite the fact that it is written in Java, is unique for each platform.
Hope that helps you.
I'd suggest wxWidgets if you want to program in C++ or wxPython (the python language binding of wxWidgets if you know or don't mind learning Python.
Architecture is similar to QT I think.
Layout using sizers. Quite easy once you get the hang of it.
Liberal open source license.
Widgets are native on all platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux).

Selecting GUI on windows (wxPy vs pyQt)

We are planning to develop an application for monitoring and configuring our service (which is running on remote server). After long time of discussion, we decided for python as platform for our app, because we love and know python. But we don't know, what GUI toolkit preferred for our aims. We need fast (for development and running) app, whose users will be Admins, Maintainers and Account managers.
There are two GUI toolkit for python, which we know: wxPython and pyQT.
Anybody have arguments regarding pro and cons? And maybe someone knows any commercial applications, using these products (only python version of toolkits)? Links are desirable.
Thanks.
I choose wxPython after much research. The reasons were:
"wxPython in Action" book by Rappin & Dunn
The voluminous examples that come as part of the wxPython download
The number of projects that have used wxWidgets
The fact that wxPython code runs equally well on Linux, Mac OS/X and Win32
I did consider pyQT and other researchers are successfully using it. After writing many examples in all API's that I considered, I found wxPython ticked the most boxes for me.
As for Tkinter (TIX), I think it looks rather dated.
Unless you are using IronPython or Jython I would not consider using the associated native windowing APIs. For another project which is to be delivered exclusively on .Net, I plan to use WinForms after lots of great feedback from StackOverflow members.
Well, I am a fan of QT: it has a more modern look and feel. However - your choice should be based on your actual requirements. Simple trade studies are helpful for this. Make a list of what features your toolkit must have and what features would be nice to have and then weight each item appropriately. Then look at all your options (TKinter also) and then score them according to your feature list (using the weights you assigned to each feature requirement). At the end it should be evident which one is right for your project.
I've always liked Qt's "signals and slots" conceptual model, though I guess it may take a bit of learning for developers who are more used to other models of event propagation and handling. Personally, given a choice, I'd pick PyQt because of this programming aspect.
You wrote "There is two GUI toolkit for python, which we know: wxPython and pyQT." You are forgetting about the most obvious toolkit: tkinter. That's actually part of a core python distribution, no extra downloads required.
Some people don't like Tk but that's often due to ignorance. Tk is a fine choice for a cross platform toolkit. It uses native widgets on windows (and has for many years) and the latest versions of tk use themed widgets on all platforms.
i've been using wxpython for 3 years .. and now we had to switch into pyqt since qt is integrated in maya 2011 .. however , wxpython is more straight forward and you can easily start working on it and learn it from zero fast .it provides and awesome resources and decumentation . but QT provides more powerful features that you cant find in wxpython , for example ( the multi touch detection) , QT also provides good support for drawing devices like pc tablets and so on .
qt also provides a good designer that makes u create interfaces faster.
one of qt disadvantages is it's license since it's not free like wxpython
A Windows (and Mono) option for a GUI toolkit is provided by IronPython. It provides access to the Winforms and WPF libraries. For examples, see Developing with IronPython & Windows Forms, and many others.
If you want to expand the list of options, consider building a Web App instead of a (local) GUI app. You say your service runs on a remote server, so networking is part of your requirements.
Once you start down that road, Python provides a bewildering amount of options.
I want to point out two strengths that wxPython has compared to pyQt:
It uses native widgets on every supported platform. So the apps have a native look and feel. I'm aware that PyQt uses native styles, but the behavior ("the feel") is reported to be somewhat non-native especially on the Mac.
It provides a wider choice of widgets out of the box.
You should also check out PyGTK. It is similar to pyQT in programming model but does not have any licensing cost since it is LGPL. I always found it nice to work with as a developer. The main drawback over pyQT is that in some cases they take away functionality in things like file chooser dialogs in favour of simplicity for the user.

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