[PD-dev] More gui-rewrite: Re: Pd-extended EOL?

[Kaj Ailomaa]

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016, at 11:59 AM, Kaj Ailomaa wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2015, at 07:53 PM, Jonathan Wilkes via Pd-dev wrote:
> > > * convert this to a pd message one at a time
> > If anyone wants some advice on how to do this in practice, PM me.
> > -Jonathan
> > 
> >      On Tuesday, November 10, 2015 10:01 AM, Hans-Christoph Steiner
> >      <hans at at.or.at> wrote:
> > Its been too long for me to give much detail, I definitely wrote about
> > this
> > multiple times, so check the archives.  This is not a great setup, but it
> > is
> > necessary because pd sends drawing commands with pixel values to pd-gui. 
> > But
> > I remember it was something like this:
> > 
> > * set [tk scaling 1] on all platforms
> > * measure the boxes a lot, on various platforms and versions
> > * fix when the pixel values are different
> > 
> > The real way to fix this is to make pd know as little as possible about
> > the
> > GUI stuff, then things can be handled much better in pd-gui.  If you are
> > going
> > to put work into this, the best approach is also a more incremental
> > approach.
> >  This approach will also easily give Pd a scalable GUI.
> > 
> > * look for any sys_vgui() call in pd that sends raw Tcl
> > * convert this to a pd message one at a time
> > * push the logic to pd-gui as much as possible
> > 
> 
> Hi Jonathan, and everyone else!
> 
> I would be interested in working on the gui stuff. 
> I was just trying to do some theming and tried applying the color scheme
> part of pd-extended as a patch to vanilla. It kind of worked, but it was
> just a first attempt. Anyway, I would very much like to do more of this,
> so please give me some hints.
> 
> Scaling would be awesome.
> 
> /Kaj Ailomaa
> 

I was looking for an example (using grep) where sys_vgui() sends pd
messages instead of tcl commands to find an example, and this was pretty
much it:

./s_print.c:        sys_vgui("::pdwindow::post {%s}\n",
strnescape(upbuf, s, MAXPDSTRING));
./s_print.c:        sys_vgui("::pdwindow::logpost {%s} 1 {%s}\n",
./s_print.c:        sys_vgui("::pdwindow::logpost {%s} %d {%s}\n",

So, that looks easy enough. But, I still have very loose grasp on
everything to do with pd programming. So, there's really a lot for me to
understand. I will need to have a look at pd messages, which ones I
should use, and if I need to create new ones.
Also, how do I actually create an object in the correct patch window
using tcl.
An example of this would be nice, and would allow for me to do some work
right away - at least for testing and getting better acquainted with the
code.

/Kaj