nanogui: Thread: FLTK and other things

Hi!

It's a time ago I had a look at FLTK and found it very satisfying. It would be
great, if we could use it on top of NanoGui to write higher level UI-code.

It seems to me, that FLTK comes from the "X11-world". Is there any reason why
not port it to nano-X instead of MicroWindows interface? (I'm familiar with X11,
so sorry for that question - it should not instantiate any kind of interface-war
;-)

A few weeks ago I was in the process of porting the PAL-Library (HP-LX Palmtops)
to X11. I stopped this, because nobody needs this (I did know this before ;-).

I was very happy, that I was not the only one with having speed problems with
images etc. In some kind X11 is very ugly. So I would prefer not to have the
X11-API reimplemented (there are enough little X11-Systems) - I would more like
to see some new ideas implemented. The same for Win32, but maybe it could be
also very good to (more or less) easyly port some apps.

What about a server one could connect to like in X11 with IDs and to the same
from Win32 via shared memory? 

I don't understand so much about it, but I would like to see both interfaces
developed further. 

Yesterday I tried to understand nano-X, but the only documentation was the old
mini-x one. Some functions have been added since that old times. Could I support
you by writing/updating some documentation about nano-X? 

I hate these monster systems (even for making documentation), but I started to
get familiar with sgml to convert the nano-X documentation to SGML, then HTML,
RTF etc.

Is somebody already working on this?

Martin Doering

> Hi!
> 
> It's a time ago I had a look at FLTK and found it very satisfying. It would be
> great, if we could use it on top of NanoGui to write higher level UI-code.

Yes it is pretty cool. 

> It seems to me, that FLTK comes from the "X11-world". Is there any reason why
> not port it to nano-X instead of MicroWindows interface? (I'm familiar with X11,
> so sorry for that question - it should not instantiate any kind of interface-war
> ;-)

You're not going to :).  The simple answer is that Nano-X is not
compatible with X11.  It looks to me that FLTK was initially written
for X11, but basically Nano-X!=X11, and its questionable as to whether
it will try to be.  However, while microwindows!=Win32... its a LOT
closer.  Maybe someday we'll have a x11 compatibility libs type
thingee like Alan was talking about for microwindows, but we don't
now, nor will we have for some time to come more than likely.  (I'm
not holding my breath :>)

> A few weeks ago I was in the process of porting the PAL-Library (HP-LX Palmtops)
> to X11. I stopped this, because nobody needs this (I did know this before ;-).
> 
> I was very happy, that I was not the only one with having speed problems with
> images etc. In some kind X11 is very ugly. So I would prefer not to have the
> X11-API reimplemented (there are enough little X11-Systems) - I would more like
> to see some new ideas implemented. The same for Win32, but maybe it could be
> also very good to (more or less) easyly port some apps.
> 
> What about a server one could connect to like in X11 with IDs and to the same
> from Win32 via shared memory? 
>
> I don't understand so much about it, but I would like to see both interfaces
> developed further. 
> 
> Yesterday I tried to understand nano-X, but the only documentation was the old
> mini-x one. Some functions have been added since that old times. Could I support
> you by writing/updating some documentation about nano-X? 

That would be great.  This was one of my initial reasons for choosing
the microwindows base for the port.  Essentially win32 has lots of
docs, but Nano-X does not.  Until it does I'm pretty sure we won't see
much in the way of direct ports to Nano-X.

> I hate these monster systems (even for making documentation), but I started to
> get familiar with sgml to convert the nano-X documentation to SGML, then HTML,
> RTF etc.
> 
> Is somebody already working on this?

Not that I know of.

> Martin Doering
> 
> 
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> 
> You're not going to :).  The simple answer is that Nano-X is not
> compatible with X11.  It looks to me that FLTK was initially written
> for X11, but basically Nano-X!=X11, and its questionable as to whether
> it will try to be.  However, while microwindows!=Win32... its a LOT
> closer.  Maybe someday we'll have a x11 compatibility libs type
> thingee like Alan was talking about for microwindows, but we don't
> now, nor will we have for some time to come more than likely.  (I'm
> not holding my breath :>)
> 

I hate to respond immediately to my own post, but I'd like to expand
that last statement real quick.  Alan Cox mentioned in passing that we
might want to have a microwindows compatibility lib to sort of munge
various commands in Win32 into unixish type stuff.  Like GlobalAlloc
to malloc().  I think this is a good idea, but we could expand it to
include a Nano-X speak to X11 speak, this I imagine would make porting
stuff based on X11 much easier, i.e. switch over those Gd calls.  I
think this would be a fairly major undertaking though...

Anyway just a expansion on that which came before..., which is sort of
the condition of mankind anyway :).

Shane.

: It seems to me, that FLTK comes from the "X11-world". Is there any reason why
: not port it to nano-X instead of MicroWindows interface? (I'm familiar with
X11,
: so sorry for that question - it should not instantiate any kind of
interface-war
: ;-)

The only reason that the first port is using win32 is that the win32 api is
much farther ahead at this point, and there lacks window management in
the nano-X api so far.  But they are moving forward.

At this point, there's quite a bit of things to do to get _any_ toolkit
running on top of Microwindows.  So getting a good idea of what's
missing from the engine is what I'm getting into.



In some kind X11 is very ugly. So I would prefer not to have the
: X11-API reimplemented (there are enough little X11-Systems) - I would more
like
: to see some new ideas implemented. The same for Win32, but maybe it could be
: also very good to (more or less) easyly port some apps.

Let's get some apps ported: you pick, X11 or Win32...


:
: What about a server one could connect to like in X11 with IDs

That runs now with Nano-X.


 and to the same
: from Win32 via shared memory?

That's something that needs quite a bit of design work, and some good LPC


:
: Yesterday I tried to understand nano-X, but the only documentation was the old
: mini-x one. Some functions have been added since that old times. Could I
support
: you by writing/updating some documentation about nano-X?

It sounds like you don't have anywhere near the latest version, which is
0.88pre3.
There's also quite a bit of technical documentation on the web site, under the
Architecture page. (http://microwindows.org)

I'm interested in more documentation for Nano-X and Microwindows APIs, in
HTML.  Start by checking out what's already written.  The Mini-X docs
are very outdated, although the concepts still hold.  Moving them
to HTML and saving the portions that relate to Nano-X would be a good
idea.

Regards,

Greg