[Bf-committers] SDL2-based GUI toolkit for Blender

[hewi at jupama.org]

Dear Felipe Ferreira da Silva,

Nice to see there's so many people involved in the BUI
(BlenderUserInterface) seperation.  Your input is appreciated.

Quote:"very integrated with the rest of the program":  This is exactly the
reason why the BUI needs to be pulled out of the core code.

Main point: quote:"was using Gtk+", - you also have wxwidgets and QT
creator and others which are doing exactly the same thing as you are
doing, creating a widget interface.  Before getting too deeply into this,
did you do a study of all the alternatives out there?  SDL, which you are
using, is apparently also not the best lib ...

you should definatelly have a look at the BA thread #315530
(http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?315530), there is an
active debate on the OpenGL libs interface to be used.  Bottom line
basically for now is to stick to the GHOST system ...

Thanks though for your effort and mail.

Kindest regards

hewi

>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2013 07:12:13 -0200
>> From: Felipe Ferreira da Silva <felipefsdev at gmail.com>
>> Subject: [Bf-committers] SDL2-based GUI toolkit for Blender (just a
>> 	suggestion)
>> To: bf-committers at blender.org
>> Message-ID:
>> 	<CALcZrxAtYY2_-5qYmKHxjjjcWm-s5M9dBYygzWDtxJr6B+DZnA at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>> Hi!
>> Since it's the first time I'm posting here, my name is Felipe. I'm a
Blender user for years, and as a software developer I see a lot of
posts
>> asking about which one is the GUI toolkit used by Blender. The answer
is
>> that it is a embed library (very integrated with the rest of the program),
>> and it is hard to use as a stand-alone.
>> Well, I'm working on a personal project, and a need to create a custom
toolkit has emerged (I was using Gtk+, but it was useless at such
point,
>> since integrate Gtk+ with OpenGL is very wearing), and maybe this toolkit
>> could be used in the future of Blender. I'm creating a GUI toolkit in C
with a simple system of class hierarchy for the widgets. It is very
easy
>> to
>> create new classes of widgets. For now, I have only 4 widget classes, but
>> my plan is to create equivalent classes to those of Gtk+.
>> I'm using SDL2 for inputs and drawing. The widgets are drawn using the
SDL_Texture, and I will put support to OpenGL widgets (just converting
the
>> SDL_Texture of an widget to a OpenGL rendering and then back to
SDL_Texture). I'm not even using the hardware accelerated option of
SDL2,
>> and the drawing is surprisingly fast.
>> screenshots:
>> https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-3vTAPZlQpGY/Upr1izkbv2I/AAAAAAAAAE8/h-Cy7ibJYCQ/s1055/Screen001.png
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-cANZBgd_5EQ/Upr1i_UhjmI/AAAAAAAAAFA/rd5_kf-Mmc8/s1055/Screen002.png
In this second screen, the window has two "client widgets", that are
top-level widgets. The top widget will be drawn above the others and a
shadow/hatch effect will be drawn behind to indicate that we are
dealing
>> with a widget that acts has a modal window.
>> And here is the code that takes to create this window and widgets:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3jrwV6dYbFk/Upr57CyQ1TI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/mgMQ_oBAlj0/s800/Screen003.png
It is very simple. To create new classes of widget, you just need to
create
>> an allocation function and register it in the class manager. To create new
>> properties just need to use a function Widget_AddInt(),
>> Widget_AddBool(),
>> Widget_AddPointer()... and so on. The same is to set or get a value.
Well, it is just it for now, I think that a stand-alone gui toolkit
could
>> give to the developers more flexibility over the interface, but I know
that
>> it would be something very arduous to change, so I'm just exposing a
suggestion. I will keep working on this toolkit because I need it, but
if
>> anyone show interest, I plan to put it on git as GPL or LGPL when it
becomes more usable.
>> --
>> - Felipe Ferreira da Silva
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>> End of Bf-committers Digest, Vol 113, Issue 1
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