I am new to wxpython and am running into a problem. What I'd like to do is bind events to device context objects. For example, in one window I would draw a number of different device context objects (i.e. lines, rectangles, etc). First, I would like to be able to select a specific object within the window, for the purposes of linking it to a text box that names it. Second, I'd like to be able to drag the object anywhere within the window, preferably with mouse-down, mouse-move events. I know that this is possible in Tkinter's canvasses, but I can't find any equivalent method in wxpython. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
David
The wxPython demo has an example of selecting objects and dragging them around. There's also the Whyteboard program that has similar functionality and it's written in wxPython too. I would check that out: https://launchpad.net/whyteboard
Related
I'd like to obtain a reference to underlying java components for the controls I have in my GUI so as to customize their appearance.
I know about findjobj from Yair Altman which works really well:
myLink = uicontrol('String', '<html><u>Button that looks like a link.</u></html>');
jObj = findjobj(myLink);
jObj.setContentAreaFilled(0);
Unfortunately this solution is quite slow when there are a "lot" of controls to customize (because it has to parse the full hierarchy of objects in the figure and this for each control to customize).
Moreover the figure must be visible (else controls are not instantiated and java references cannot be found). Plus it must be moved of screen to avoid users to touch it while findjobj is running (sometimes make things crash because findjobj somehow relies on position of controls to find them while internally calling also drawnow which updates positions) ...
On some machines, even with only a few controls to customize, it can be up to 10 seconds before to have the figure to appear (most of the time is spent in findjobj).
I also know about uicomponent again from Yair Altman to directly create controls and get the handle to the underlying java component in one shot:
[myLink, jObj] = uicomponent('Style', 'JButton', 'String', '<html><u>Button that looks like a link.</u></html>');
jObj.setContentAreaFilled(0);
Unfortunately here the parent property can only be a figure and of course my controls are placed in gui layout containers to handle resizing and many other things nicely (and gui layout containter are not valid hg-handles for uicomponent to work)...
So was wondering if there could be any other fast solution to get underlying java components for controls in my GUI ? ... NB: I mainly only need to have buttons that looks like hyperlinks or animated gif (i.e. borderless buttons with htlm text/img inside).
This isn't a direct answer to your question, but I've built several GUIs that are based around GUI Layout Toolbox and that contain Java swing components. I typically arrange things so that the GUI Layout container (HBox, VBox, Grid etc) has a uipanel as a child, and then the uipanel has the Java swing component as a child.
You can typically parent a Java component to the uipanel in exactly the same way as parenting it to a figure (unlike a GUI Layout container), and it's no problem to parent a uipanel to a GUI Layout container.
So, for example, to add a button with a dropdown menu (no menu items, so it won't do anything, but just to illustrate):
>> u = uipanel;
>> ddbuttonclass = 'com.mathworks.widgets.DropdownButton';
>> ddbutton = javaObjectEDT(ddbuttonclass);
>> [jddbutton, hjddbutton] = javacomponent(ddbutton, [30,30, 60, 30], u);
Now you can parent u to a GUI Layout container, and you get all the nice resizing.
I'm not that familiar with Yair's uicomponent, but if you can get the handle of the java component somehow, you should be able to use something like the above.
PS If you want his direct input, #Yair is sometimes active on SO - he may get notified if I mention his name. If you're doing a lot of Java/MATLAB GUI work, I'd also recommend buying his book.
UICOMPONENT was designed to be a direct replacement of both Matlab's built-in UICONTROL and JAVACOMPONENT functions. This means that you can directly place a UICOMPONENT within panels, even those created by the GUI Layout toolbox.
You might need to cast the layout panel's handle to double (double(hPanel)) on some Matlab releases but that's about it:
[myLink, jObj] = uicomponent('Parent',hPanel, ...);
[myLink, jObj] = uicomponent('Parent',double(hPanel), ...); % on some Matlab releases
You could also use JAVACOMPONENT directly, but it doesn't really give you any benefits over UICOMPONENT, since UICOMPONENT uses JAVACOMPONENT under the hood and also adds important functionality (such as ensuring the component is placed on the EDT, and merging important properties from the Matlab wrapper).
As for FINDJOBJ, you can speed it up a bit by specifying the target object class using the 'class' parameter. But if your figure contains hundreds of controls it might still be slow. To this day, close to 10 years after my first version of FINDJOBJ, I still do not know of a direct way to get the underlying Java object. I assume there is one that is used internally by MathWorks, but I do not know it.
As #SamRoberts mentioned, this is all discussed in my book...
I have a windows application which has several sub-forms. i have to navigate through 5 or 6 forms to reach the form i need. this is time consuming since i have to open it several times through the day and i do it daily.
my need: i dont have the source project for this application, i got it as an executable program, but i need to create some application that does these steps for me automatically. In other words i need to find a way to automatically click the buttons that navigate through the forms and opens the form i need from step one.
is there any way i can do this ?
There is indeed, though generic solutions already exist to perform just this kind of function to arbitrary programs.
You can use Spy++ or a resource-editor, like ResHack or ResEdit to look at the program and get the control ids of the navigation buttons.
Once done, you can get a handle to the program itself and then send messages to it's WindowProcedure that would be generated if the user clicked the controls with a mouse,
Another alternative, is to get the position of the running target application, after you've got it's HWND, by using the GetWindowRect function. You could then use this position along with vert/horiz distances to generate mouse events.
The two have more-or-less the same result, though some applications won't work with approach #1.
In one instance, you need to use Spy++ to get the control IDs.
In the other instance, you need to use an image editor to get the pixel offsets of the controls.
In both instances, you'll need to use FindWindow, along with the window's title-text in order to get a HWND handle.
You could use a combination of the two - asking the program itself with GetDlgItem for the handle of the controls you need to click. You could then query the control for its position, before using mouse_event to position the mouse above it and again to click it.
Quite a few ways to skin this cat, actually.
Pre-existing solutions like AutoIt are said to be very easy to use and will be much easier than coding a new program for each target.
I'm building an application to generate an array of colors based on a color chosen by the user.
The default on Mac OS X for color selection is to open a NSColorPanel containing multiple NSColorPickers. But, as the color selection process is the main interaction the user will have with the app, it'd be better to avoid the extra clicks and panel-popping in favor of a more straightforward way.
So, is there any way to add a NSColorPicker object to a window?
I know this is an older question, but check out NSColorWell. From the docs:
NSColorWell is an NSControl for selecting and displaying a single color value.
Interresting Question.
I strongly doubt it (but would love to be proven wrong). NSColorPickers are not NSControls (nor NSCells) so there's no clean wrapper to insert into a window.
Even if you were to instanciate an NSColorPanel and get a reference to its contentView and copy it (with all that defines the color picking controls) to your own window... there's no obvious way of obtaining the color value. NSColorPickers are plug-ins so you can't forsee the controls of a colorPicker.
The only other way I can see (and that's a stretch) would be to manually load the NSColorPickers plug-ins directly. I don't know how successfull this would be.
File a bug report and request the feature?
I'm trying to create a very simple selection list widget based on NSOutlineView. However, I'm having a hard time figuring out how to display an icon and a label right next to it, which is really the expected behavior in all the mainstream implementations of that kind of widget out there (iTunes, mail, Finder,...).
So far I am just binding two separate cells, but then when I'm expanding the tree, the icon cell grows larger and a gap appears between the icon and its accompanying label. I know I can probably overcome this problem by extending NSCell and provide a custom class, but as what I'm trying to achieve is really the standard thing, I can't be resigned to accept that there isn't a simpler solution.
Candide
Sadly, there isn't a 'text and icon' cell that you can just use, fresh out of the box as you would like. However, when I was working on a project, I found that Apple released some sample code that implements this, since it is such a common idiom.
This can be found here, specifically ImageAndTextCell.h/m
It can help teach you about UI customization by reading through this example, but scratching that, just dropping the ImageAndTextCell straight into your project should do just fine.
You need to create ImageAndTextcell to combine text and icon..
you can create ImageAndTextcell like this Sample Project
I would like to create an OpenGL context with GLX inside a window. However, I do not want it to span over the whole window region. Instead, it should only cover a subregion.
For example, GLUT provides a function for this behaviour. Also major toolkits like GTK+ or QT provide GL widgets, which are only subregions of X windows. However I need to work low-level.
glXMakeCurrent() accepts a X Drawable identifier. Is it possible to define a Drawable as being a subregion of a window? Or are there other ways to bind the context to a window region?
GLX reference (Blue Book)
Edit: Added awesome bounty!
You can only glXMakeCurrent() an X Drawable, not a subsection of it, however your solution is simple: stop thinking about an X window as if it is your application. Each X application is typically made up of 10's or 100's of X windows. Create a child window in the area you want and draw into it.
Alternately, you could create a pixmap, render into it and then copy to an area of a window, but that would be slower.
I found this helpful piece of information in a BSD manpage:
In almost every regard that is important to you, a subwindow is like a top-level window. It has a window id; it has its own set of event callbacks; you can render to it; you are notified of its creation; ...
A subwindow lives inside of some other window (possibly a top-level window, possibly another subwindow). Because of this, it generally only interacts with other windows of your own creation, hence it is not subjected to a window manager. This is the primary source for its differences from a top-level window:
So I assume that GL widgets in popular toolkits also act in fact as a distinct (sub)window. The interesting part is that this is transparent to the window manager, and therefore the user.