[PD] Tkzinc and other ui toolkits [was: RE: notes/questions from a beginner]

[András Murányi]

2011/8/25 Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>

>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca>
> > To: András Murányi <muranyia at gmail.com>
> > Cc: pd-list <pd-list at iem.at>
> > Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 3:18 PM
> > Subject: Re: [PD] notes/questions from a beginner
> >
> > On Thu, 25 Aug 2011, András Murányi wrote:
> >
> >>  On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 23:10, Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> > wrote:
> >>        [...]
> >>
> >>  * has anyone used tkzinc?  On the one hand, all the new feature
> requests
> > I've seen for future versions of tk canvas have the caveat that they are
> > already implemented in
> >>  tkzinc, (item grouping, transparency, full text rotation, etc.) but it
> > seems like an unmaintained library at this point.
> >>
> >>  It does seem unmaintained but to what extent is it unfinished/buggy?
> >
> > The biggest problem with TkZinc is not what looks like unfinished stuff
> or bugs,
> > it's that although its API looks a lot like the TkCanvas that Pd uses,
> > it's not compatible enough.
>
> I think I must have sent my last message only to András,


my bad


> but I looked around at the
> tkzinc demos and found at least one obvious bug in the latest version.
> Additionally there
> was documentation that said rotation would work without using opengl, but
> on two
> machine I experienced a crash with the corresponding demo if I compiled
> without
> enabling gl support.  (Worked fine with opengl enable, though.)
>

That's why I thought i may have been a configuration problem (not you
messing it up but an outdated configure script), because I suppose the
output is the same in both cases, it's just handled by a different library -
when not direct opengl, mesa trying to emulate it (if i'm understanding mesa
right)
Anyway, it is a bug


>
> Additionally, one of the demos showing off graphics interaction and
> transparency was
> _extremely_ sluggish just moving a few rectangles around on the screen.
> Add to that
> another of the demos showing an air traffic control interface where the
> interval between
> graphics updates was about 1sec, and I would say I don't think the tkzinc
> canvas
> was designed with efficiency in mind.
>

I don't even know why that stuff was advertised as proof of performace...
the famous tiger is a lot more curves and a lot more movement.
I mean, i'm sure the air traffic stuff would be able to run 40 times faster
(well, maybe i'll even try)


>
> But the grouping stuff and sensitivity levels are very cool.  As is the svg
> tiger.
>

> All I could think of is adding these gems to the "Put" menu array dialog:
>
> Array Properties
>
> Name:
> array1
>
> Size:
> 100
>
> [*] Save contents
>
> Draw as:
> [] Points
> [] Polygon
> [] Bezier curve
> [*] Svg tigers
>
> Put array into:
> [] New graph
> [] Last graph
> [*] Svg tiger
>
>
Well, I'd say I wish a GUI toolkit which:
- is truly cross-platform
- provides standard widgets
- provides an equivalent of tk canvas
- can accelerate standard widgets (and, of course, anything else) by opengl
- fast at the backend
- standard widgets preferably skinnable
- can haz svg tiger or other animals... everyone likes a cute penguin, for
instance :o)

Qt is strong contender...
Well, qt on the top of tcl? seems to be a dead cow...
Qtscript, however, is ecmascript (javascript) based... I woudn't be
surprised if this meant some possible synergy with webpd! (which I'd be
personally very happy to see)

Andras
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