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A few new user questions and comments [message #10111]

Thu, 21 June 2007 02:23

gerryw
Messages: 4
Registered: June 2007

Junior Member

Hello All,

I've just recently come across upp. I have spent some time looking around the site and reading the forums. Overall, I found several things I like about upp. However, there is what appears to be a major show stopper. Apparently, the U++ library has a dependency on "theIDE"? Is this true? I am very surprised by this. Especially After reading several places on the site that talk about superior object oriented design etc.. Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining. I just don't understand how this happened. Is this really the case? Is it by design?

Is there a layout container in upp similar to "sizers" ala wxWidgets? A sizer based container is very useful in laying out widgets on dialogs. If used properly, sizers pretty much eliminate the need for a GUI form designer completely.

Thanks,
-G

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10114 is a reply to message #10111]

Thu, 21 June 2007 05:35

mirek
Messages: 14255
Registered: November 2005

Ultimate Member

gerryw wrote on Wed, 20 June 2007 20:23

Apparently, the U++ library has a dependency on "theIDE"? Is this true?

More or less. No problem building U++ applications using makefiles, but compared to using theide, tedious task.

Alternatively, you can use TheIDE as "make" (in commandline mode). (BTW, this is not too much different with e.g. Qt - you also have to use a couple of trolltech utilities to build Qt programs. Just U++ has the GUI with it too...)

People are also working on getting it work with MSVC directly, more or less possible...

Quote:

I am very surprised by this. Especially After reading several places on the site that talk about superior object oriented design etc.. Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining. I just don't understand how this happened.

Well, the exact process was this: U++ was originally develeped in MS Visual Studio. At one moment in the time (cca 2002), it was used in about 8 applications (commercial), but each of them used different parts of U++, different external libraries etc...

The task of managing project dependecies using MSVC became quite tedious. Therefore we attempted to create theide to automatize this task. So the main reason for theide is what you see if you invoke Project/Package organizer...

Quote:

Is there a layout container in upp similar to "sizers" ala wxWidgets? A sizer based container is very useful in laying out widgets on dialogs. If used properly, sizers pretty much eliminate the need for a GUI form designer completely.

No, U++ has GUI form designer...

Mirek

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10116 is a reply to message #10111]

Thu, 21 June 2007 08:53

gerryw
Messages: 4
Registered: June 2007

Junior Member

Thanks Mirek!

You mentioned that there are some folks working on making the U++ lib build standalone with VC. Is this going to be officially supported in future releases? Also, does this limitation exist for Linux as well?

I've been looking for some doc on creating custom widgets. Perhaps I have missed it. Would someone be so kind as to point me to any reference material on the subject?

Would it be possible to create the sizer container widget that I spoke of by overriding some kind of layout or draw function?

Thanks,
Gerry

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10121 is a reply to message #10116]

Thu, 21 June 2007 12:42

waxblood
Messages: 95
Registered: January 2007

Member

Quote:

I've been looking for some doc on creating custom widgets. Perhaps I have missed it. Would someone be so kind as to point me to any reference material on the subject?

Look at the GUI tutorial (but it seems strange to me you've missed it Razz

):
http://www.ultimatepp.org/srcdoc$CtrlLib$Tutorial$en-us.html

chapter 21. Creating and using custom widgets
but read the previous, too Wink

Quote:

Would it be possible to create the sizer container widget that I spoke of by overriding some kind of layout or draw function?

You could look at this thread
http://www.ultimatepp.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&goto=874 5&#msg_8745

Ciao,
David

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10122 is a reply to message #10116]

Thu, 21 June 2007 13:55

mirek
Messages: 14255
Registered: November 2005

Ultimate Member

gerryw wrote on Thu, 21 June 2007 02:53

Thanks Mirek!

You mentioned that there are some folks working on making the U++ lib build standalone with VC. Is this going to be officially supported in future releases?

When it is working, yes. OTOH, it is not the focus of core team now..

In the process, the real trouble is that MSVC build process is unsufficient... (.icpp issue).

Quote:

Also, does this limitation exist for Linux as well?

AFAIK, there is no MSVC in Linux Smile

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10127 is a reply to message #10114]

Thu, 21 June 2007 17:31

arturbac
Messages: 91
Registered: May 2007
Location: Reda, Poland

Member

luzr wrote on Thu, 21 June 2007 05:35

Alternatively, you can use TheIDE as "make" (in commandline mode). (BTW, this is not too much different with e.g. Qt - you also have to use a couple of trolltech utilities to build Qt programs. Just U++ has the GUI with it too...)
Mirek

Right on windows we can , but if We want to build with comandline theide app on bsd server We will have to downlaod and build X,gtk,glib and many other libs that we dont use on serwers.

Thats why there are no Qt apps for text terminals without X.
Qt in ver 3 lacks of split core and gui part. As i remember they planed this for Qt4.

U++ has very good split of them (gui and core) but building on text terminal without X with commandline theide is imposible.

The only way is creating custom makefile with AutoTools or similar projects. But still to build commandline app we will have to download entire source even for theide.
I think thise will stop users a bit of making apps for Linux/BSD with Upp and make Upp less popular.
Just imagine downloading entiresource of kde, kdedevelop , kdesdk and other things to build just kdebse with kdelibs.

PS. Im not complaining .. but i would like that U++ will be Top trendy and the best toolkit in the future Smile

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10128 is a reply to message #10121]

Thu, 21 June 2007 17:32

mrjt
Messages: 705
Registered: March 2007
Location: London

Contributor

waxblood wrote on Thu, 21 June 2007 11:42

Quote:

Would it be possible to create the sizer container widget that I spoke of by overriding some kind of layout or draw function?

You could look at this thread
http://www.ultimatepp.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&goto=874 5&#msg_8745

It's a bit of an ugly example, but it illustrates how you can achieve it.

These sorts of simple layout managers are very, very easy to make in Upp once you understand how the logical positioning system works. Making a general use package is more difficult, but I've been tempted to make one for a while since people keep asking for it (and I keep finding uses for them myself).

[Updated on: Thu, 21 June 2007 17:51]

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10135 is a reply to message #10111]

Thu, 21 June 2007 22:41

gerryw
Messages: 4
Registered: June 2007

Junior Member

Hello All,

I very much appreciate your responses. It's always a pleasure to look at a project that has an active user/dev community around it.

I guess at this point I'm trying to figure out what the effort is going to be to get this puppy into a production build environment. It looks like there are two major tasks necessary to make this a reality.

1. Remove / Resolve dependencies between "theIDE" and the U++ lib build. We need to be able to build the lib for both M$ and Linux within a fully encapsulated cmake build.

2. Develop some layout widgets that will replace "theIDE" layout designer.

I'm going to have someone on the team design and size this effort and we will see where we end up.

We are actually evaluating several GUI toolkits / frameworks. UPP looks promising from a lib perspective. Unfortunately, everything we are looking at requires some type of tweaking to work for us. We have managed to reduce the list to just a few though. I intend to assign a developer to each one to evaluate usability and the effort involved to make it fit.

The current list is:

FLTK
UPP
VCF
WxWidgets

FLTK - This is the current team favorite. I must admit I'm rather fond of it too. However, there are several work items involved in getting this to the point that it is usable. Cross-platform printing support is probably the biggest shortcoming. Although the API and performance are refreshing.

UPP - As noted above.

VCF - This was initially eliminated do to several things about the API that the team didn't like. However, we've decided to give it another look.

WxWidgets - This package is very complete, but everyone really dislikes the macro thing. It also seems to vary significantly in quality between various widgets / classes / platforms.

Note: We have not yet had the opportunity to write any code against UPP or VCF. The list above just represents where we are in the eval process right now. If y'all are interested, I will keep you posted.

Thanks again for you time and assistance,
Gerry

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10138 is a reply to message #10135]

Fri, 22 June 2007 00:04

zsolt
Messages: 702
Registered: December 2005
Location: Budapest, Hungary

Contributor

Quote:

1. Remove / Resolve dependencies between "theIDE" and the U++ lib build. We need to be able to build the lib for both M$ and Linux within a fully encapsulated cmake build.

Funny, this was my first impression as well, but after a one week trial (I ported a simple app from wxwidgedts, just for fun), I did not want to use uncomfortable makefiles and wait for long rebuilds anymore.
TheIde and it's built in very fast BLITZ builder technology is really addictive Smile

You can be really efficient with TheIde and U++, and this is is true, not marketing only.

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10142 is a reply to message #10138]

Fri, 22 June 2007 01:02

gerryw
Messages: 4
Registered: June 2007

Junior Member

Hi,

Yeah.. I understand what your saying. I've played with theIDE a bit. I've built several of the examples as well as a little test app. I would imagine that theIDE would be okay in a small team of developers, but I don't think it would work to well for a large team / project. We have a dedicated build team that is responsible for all of our test and production builds. The developers are pretty much out of the picture at that point. We build on clean machines where the compiler and all associated tools / libs etc. are fully contained in the build tree. This way, once a build has been verified and promoted by the test team, we can reliably reproduce it for production / GA.

I just learned that VCF does not support Linux yet. I'm not sure how it ended up on our list in the first place if that's the case. Anyway, I really hope we can come up with a solution for UPP. I'm impressed with the level of community interest / involvement.

BTW: Has anyone tried building UPPWIN with Borland?

Thanks,
Gerry

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10163 is a reply to message #10142]

Fri, 22 June 2007 20:54

mirek
Messages: 14255
Registered: November 2005

Ultimate Member

gerryw wrote on Thu, 21 June 2007 19:02

build on clean machines where the compiler and all associated tools / libs etc. are fully contained in the build tree. This way, once a build has been verified and promoted by the test team, we can reliably reproduce it for production / GA.

So what is the problem/difference? TheIDE is just another build tool that you are using instead of make in the process.

BTW, U++ release process is at the moment fully automatized, using C++ GUI program itself developed in TheIDE.

You just start this program, select which version you are about to release (in Windows version, there is even GUI dialog for this). The automatized system then compiles the fresh theide.exe, makes all requested installation packages, compiles them into installer programs and uploads them to sourceforge.net. The only thing that has to be done manually at the moment is to announce the package on the sf.net download site.

Linux release process is similar, just using bash scripts instead (AFAIK...).

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10168 is a reply to message #10111]

Sat, 23 June 2007 03:02

fudadmin
Messages: 1321
Registered: November 2005
Location: Kaunas, Lithuania

Ultimate Contributor
Administrator

Just a note.
Widget sizers is a good idea. But, I think, even better would be to have Foxtoolkit approach - owners and parents in some cases. Personaly, I have experimented with this in upp bet then came to a conclusion that ideally a new, tree based, layout designer would be needed...

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10174 is a reply to message #10168]

Sat, 23 June 2007 09:45

mezise
Messages: 54
Registered: April 2006

Member

fudadmin wrote on Sat, 23 June 2007 03:02

Widget sizers is a good idea.

I agree. Here is wxWidgets sizers overview:
http://www.wxwidgets.org/manuals/stable/wx_sizeroverview.htm l

Michal

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Re: A few new user questions and comments [message #10202 is a reply to message #10135]

Mon, 25 June 2007 05:21

Novo
Messages: 1430
Registered: December 2006

Ultimate Contributor

gerryw wrote on Thu, 21 June 2007 16:41

Hello All,

1. Remove / Resolve dependencies between "theIDE" and the U++ lib build. We need to be able to build the lib for both M$ and Linux within a fully encapsulated cmake build.

I've tried another approach - MPC (http://www.ociweb.com/products/mpc)

It is similar to cmake, but it is not a build system. MPC is a makefile/project-file generator.

You can take a look at the results at http://www.ultimatepp.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=2097& amp;start=0&

Regards,
Novo

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