2D picture GUI Library

[Taylorh140]

Two questions about this: 

1. Does something like this already exist?

2. Is this something that could be useful?

Every once in a while I need dynamic UI components that can be generated at runtime. One nice thing to use for this is a picture control; however it doesn't lend itself as well to keeping other pieces of function such as mouse click events and such. I put together a mini library of UI functions for this that has the ability to be extended. The UI can be generated dynamically at runtime and be any picture thing that you can draw.

Using Standard layout techniques that you might find in other GUI libraries. The hierarchy generation can always be simplified by using some type of templating string.

 

 

[MikaelH]

Looks Cool
Maybe we should make a public framework for this and a big open source library of UI components.
FYI you don't need to wire an empty class constant to the create methods 🙂

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

On 7/2/2021 at 9:51 PM, Taylorh140 said:

Two questions about this: 

1. Does something like this already exist?

2. Is this something that could be useful?

Every once in a while I need dynamic UI components that can be generated at runtime. One nice thing to use for this is a picture control; however it doesn't lend itself as well to keeping other pieces of function such as mouse click events and such. I put together a mini library of UI functions for this that has the ability to be extended. The UI can be generated dynamically at runtime and be any picture thing that you can draw.

Using Standard layout techniques that you might find in other GUI libraries. The hierarchy generation can always be simplified by using some type of templating string.

 

 

 

Looks interesting. Reminds me a little of the layout principle that Java GUis have. Needs a bit getting used to when you are familiar with systems like the LabVIEW GUI where you put everything at absolute (or relative absolute) positions.

And as Mikael says, those class constants are making this all look unnecessarily bulky. And they are in fact unnecessary if you build your class instantiation properly. The Class Instantiation methods should not need to be dynamic dispatch and then you can make that input optional or possibly even omit it. The control data type of your Create method already defines the class without a need for a class constant.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Rolf Kalbermatter

[JKSH]

On 7/3/2021 at 3:51 AM, Taylorh140 said:

1. Does something like this already exist?

Not from NI, that I know of.

I did make a similar API that wraps the Qt framework. That involves creating external windows though; your toolkit has the benefit of being integrated with VI front panels.

• Original LAVA post: https://lavag.org/topic/19611-utf-8-text-svg-images-inheritable-gui-components-dynamically-composed-guis-layout-management-splitters-in-tabs-mdis-taskbar-integration-and-much-more/
• NIPM installation instructions: https://jksh.github.io/LQ-Bindings/docs/

As Mikael and Rolf said, class constants are not needed:

 

On 7/3/2021 at 3:51 AM, Taylorh140 said:

2. Is this something that could be useful?

Definitely! LabVIEW's built-in support for dynamic GUIs is very poor. NXG was starting to show some promise with dynamic controls, but that's now dead. So, community-built tools are sorely needed.

Are you planning to make public releases of your work?

 

On 7/5/2021 at 3:57 PM, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

Reminds me a little of the layout principle that Java GUis have. Needs a bit getting used to when you are familiar with systems like the LabVIEW GUI where you put everything at absolute (or relative absolute) positions.

Layouts are common concept in a wide variety of GUI toolkits. Makes it so much easier to create resizable GUIs and support a variety of screen resolutions.

[Taylorh140]

Quote

FYI you don't need to wire an empty class constant to the create methods 🙂

This is true. bad habit I guess. I used openGDS for this w/ EndevoGoop400, so far I like it. But it is still new to me so there are possibly design 
The enabling technology for this was from @Norm Kirchner so respect where it is due. Being able to translate images allows one to build a UI component and move it into place. 

 

Each drawn component can now pretend it is the only UI component on the picture control. I'll try to get a GitHub page published soonish.
 

[Taylorh140]

I added what I have to https://github.com/taylorh140/Pgui. It's only right since I copied the enabling technology right from this forum. I don't know if ill have a huge amount of time to work on this but ill defiantly try and improve it when I can. There is still a lot of things that would be nice to develop for this.