Click Here
home features news forums classifieds faqs links search
6071 members 
Amiga Q&A /  Free for All /  Emulation /  Gaming / (Latest Posts)
Login

Nickname

Password

Lost Password?

Don't have an account yet?
Register now!

Support Amigaworld.net
Your support is needed and is appreciated as Amigaworld.net is primarily dependent upon the support of its users.
Donate

Menu
Main sections
» Home
» Features
» News
» Forums
» Classifieds
» Links
» Downloads
Extras
» OS4 Zone
» IRC Network
» AmigaWorld Radio
» Newsfeed
» Top Members
» Amiga Dealers
Information
» About Us
» FAQs
» Advertise
» Polls
» Terms of Service
» Search

IRC Channel
Server: irc.amigaworld.net
Ports: 1024,5555, 6665-6669
SSL port: 6697
Channel: #Amigaworld
Channel Policy and Guidelines

Who's Online
22 crawler(s) on-line.
 44 guest(s) on-line.
 0 member(s) on-line.



You are an anonymous user.
Register Now!
 matthey:  1 hr 12 mins ago
 Gunnar:  1 hr 17 mins ago
 DiscreetFX:  1 hr 43 mins ago
 agami:  3 hrs 32 mins ago
 OlafS25:  3 hrs 44 mins ago
 eliyahu:  4 hrs 26 mins ago
 NutsAboutAmiga:  4 hrs 27 mins ago
 Marcian:  5 hrs 33 mins ago
 michalsc:  5 hrs 34 mins ago
 vox:  6 hrs 53 mins ago

/  Forum Index
   /  Amiga OS4 Software
      /  MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Register To Post

Goto page ( 1 | 2 Next Page )
PosterThread
yoodoo2 
MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 31-Jul-2008 18:44:12
#1 ]
Super Member
Joined: 4-Aug-2003
Posts: 1332
From: Stourbridge, UK

So, I've been thinking...(that's twice this year so far)

Would anyone be interested in a drag and drop/visual Reaction editor for OS4?

I know we have Reactor and Emperor, but choice is almost always a good thing, isn't it?

The idea is to allow absolute beginners to knock together a basic interface using simple drawing tools (based on MindSpace naturally). There would be options (eventually) to preview the interface being designed and spew out C source code. A very early version would probably support window, button, string and integer classes, with more added over time.

The editor wouldn't necessarily produce pixel perfect previews, but should be enough to work out al those horrid H_layout and V-Layout tags...

It might look a bit like this.

_________________
Happiness is mandatory.
MindSpace: MindMaps and UML diagrams for OS4

We ran 5 Recursion Computer Fairs before hitting the exit condition

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Mason 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 31-Jul-2008 19:10:35
#2 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 10-Mar-2003
Posts: 350
From: Germany

@yoodoo2

A very, very good idea! If you need any support with images, please contact me!

_________________
Martin "Mason" Merz
www.masonicons.de

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
jap 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 31-Jul-2008 19:41:03
#3 ]
Member
Joined: 10-Oct-2005
Posts: 63
From: Unknown

@yoodoo2

That would be superb! Let me know if you need a tester for the MindGUI.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 31-Jul-2008 19:45:10
#4 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12791
From: Norway

@yoodoo2

I have been thinking the same thing,

What I was thinking was some kind of XML based template format, where you can add HGroups and VGroups, and objects whit in, the template can then be converted in to MUI or Reaction code when your done.

Click -> Point -> Click,

Each object has it own set of properties, the visual look does not need to be true too the end result, but more of practical design.

The GUI can for example be tested by quick click on test button to compile and start the GUI.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
saimon69 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 31-Jul-2008 21:19:10
#5 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 7-Dec-2007
Posts: 307
From: Los Angeles, CA

I would like to see something like this using MUI in AROS, thast is one of the tools that might increase developers...

Saimon69

Last edited by saimon69 on 31-Jul-2008 at 09:20 PM.

_________________
Scarabocchi Binari - Italian AROS Blog
Binary Doodles - English language AROS Blog

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Tomppeli 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 31-Jul-2008 21:22:36
#6 ]
Super Member
Joined: 18-Jun-2004
Posts: 1652
From: Home land of Santa, sauna, sisu and salmiakki

@yoodoo2 + others

I'm making this kind of a tool already myself.

_________________
Rock lobster bit me. My Workbench has always preferences. X1000 + AmigaOS4.1 FE
"Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system." -Seymour Cray

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Minuous 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 31-Jul-2008 23:49:59
#7 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 30-Oct-2004
Posts: 319
From: Unknown

I'd be interested, as long as it worked under OS3.9.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
meet.mrnrg 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 0:00:25
#8 ]
Super Member
Joined: 5-Feb-2007
Posts: 1919
From: UK, AUS, US

@NutsAboutAmiga

An XML / HTML type code - that converts into GUI would be a very powerful solution.
All in on this hand.

_________________
Quote:
Easy Pocket Money, Freelancers & Experts Online
MiniMig FPGA, Sam440 Flex 733Mhz PPC, Amiga OS 4.1 Update 2, MorphOS 2.4, Other - AmiKit + Cloanto Amiga Forever 2008 + E-UAE, AmigaSYS

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
tonyw 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 6:24:48
#9 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 3240
From: Sydney (of course)

@yoodoo2

Sounds like a great idea and I know several people have had it (the idea, that is) before. The trouble is that there is a lot more to it than a straight-line code (or macro) generation.

I've spent many long hours writing and debugging the awful Reaction macro strings. As soon as the window becomes even slightly complicated, the amount of code (and the comments that you have to add to make it maintainable) increases rapidly.

If you want any help with writing, debugging, analysing Autodocs or testing, count me in.

_________________
cheers
tony

Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Deniil715 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 7:08:50
#10 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 14-May-2003
Posts: 4235
From: Sweden

@yoodoo2

I think this is a good idea too. I would never use it for any real project though since I'm a perfectionist with very strict coding rules, and I am also a do-it-all-yourself kind of guy
But sometimes I have felt I just wanted to throw something together quickly just because I need some GUI of some sort for an experiment or whatever and then needed to write it manually which takes time.

I once saw VisualBasic in action where someone just threw something together just to test a routine. I kind of envied the simplicity, although as I said I would never use it for a real project because of the uglyness of the generated code from such tools...

@tonyw

Have you ever use MUI?
I made a number of new ReAction macros and made them look almost identical to the MUI macros: "Child", "HGroup", etc. instead of the long unreadable RA macros. I find no problem what so ever builing RA GUIs manually regardless of the size. May be because of these macros though. My RA GUIs look almost like MUI in the code.

Last edited by Deniil715 on 01-Aug-2008 at 07:14 AM.

_________________
- Don't get fooled by my avatar, I'm not like that (anymore, mostly... maybe only sometimes)
> Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
xeron 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 7:28:14
#11 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Jun-2003
Posts: 2440
From: Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, England, UK, Europe, Earth, The Milky Way, The Universe

@tonyw

I don't use (most of) the macros. PFTP's GUI, for example, is all raw taglist. I find as long as i keep it indented correctly, i can follow it fine, even when i have to cut and paste parts of it.

_________________
Playstation Network ID: xeron6

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
gregthecanuck 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 8:23:49
#12 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 30-Dec-2003
Posts: 846
From: Vancouver, Canada

@yoodoo2

Jamie at BitByBit was doing a great job with his AVD GUI Builder...

AVD GUI Builder


Too bad he put the project on hold to go work for Amiga Inc. I wonder what he is up to.


If anyone is looking for suggestions on how it should be done Jamie was on the right track.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
yoodoo2 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 10:31:50
#13 ]
Super Member
Joined: 4-Aug-2003
Posts: 1332
From: Stourbridge, UK

@gregthecanuck

Yeah, I knew about Jamie's work, but as the project is on hold...

I'm thinking of something fairly simple atm - more aimed at (a) creating simple interfaces for command-line stuff and (b) allowing beginners to knock up something quickly so they can focus on actual coding.

As much as people might loathe Visual Basic etc, it does allow absolute newbies to create vaguely working guis very quickly and without any real hassle.

MindGUI would by its very nature be limited cos (a) The intention is to use the MindSpace code and just bang on some code-spewing out routines (b) my code should never really be looked on as even vaguely acceptable (so I would need help in that area) and (c) I doubt I'd maintain interest long enough add in proper support for all the options available, so some post-generation code tweaking would be needed.

_________________
Happiness is mandatory.
MindSpace: MindMaps and UML diagrams for OS4

We ran 5 Recursion Computer Fairs before hitting the exit condition

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
DBAlex 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 11:30:05
#14 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 23-Jul-2006
Posts: 756
From: UK

@yoodoo2

This would be great...

I would have thought this should be included in the SDK allready... GUI's are best created using something like this IMHO... just look at the Visual Studio line of products & Apple's own Interface Builder

It would definitely help me if I ever get access to an OS4 machine.

_________________
A1200, 68060/64MB/1.2GB/WiFi/AGAtoCRT/OS3.9 Pegasos I, G3 600Mhz/512/9200SE/80GB WinUAE, Ryzen 5 2400G/Vega11, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD,Win 10 Pro x64 Amiga Forever !

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Hans 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 13:04:02
#15 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 27-Dec-2003
Posts: 5066
From: New Zealand

@gregthecanuck

Quote:

gregthecanuck wrote:
@yoodoo2

Jamie at BitByBit was doing a great job with his AVD GUI Builder...

AVD GUI Builder


Too bad he put the project on hold to go work for Amiga Inc. I wonder what he is up to.


If anyone is looking for suggestions on how it should be done Jamie was on the right track.


AVD GUI Builder looked very promising. Having that project put on hold was a big disappointment.

_________________
http://hdrlab.org.nz/ - Amiga OS 4 projects, programming articles and more. Home of the RadeonHD driver for Amiga OS 4.x project.
https://keasigmadelta.com/ - More of my work.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
tonyw 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 14:10:08
#16 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 3240
From: Sydney (of course)

@Deniil715

MUI is of no use to me. Anything I write with MUI can't be included as part of OS4, only as a contribution or third-party stuff.

_________________
cheers
tony

Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Minuous 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 14:57:01
#17 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 30-Oct-2004
Posts: 319
From: Unknown

>AVD GUI Builder looked very promising. Having that project put on hold was a big disappointment.

I wonder if he would release the sources, it might save yoodoo2 a fair amount of work?

So what target platform are we looking at here, ie. is this thing going to run on OS3.9?

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
DBAlex 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 15:13:01
#18 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 23-Jul-2006
Posts: 756
From: UK

@Minuous

I would say the target platform is OS4...

Although it would be great if it ran on OS3.9 too... thats not possible though right?

Or is OS3.9 Reaction and OS4.0 Reaction compatible?

Last edited by DBAlex on 01-Aug-2008 at 03:13 PM.

_________________
A1200, 68060/64MB/1.2GB/WiFi/AGAtoCRT/OS3.9 Pegasos I, G3 600Mhz/512/9200SE/80GB WinUAE, Ryzen 5 2400G/Vega11, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD,Win 10 Pro x64 Amiga Forever !

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Daedalus 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 15:37:42
#19 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Jul-2003
Posts: 1680
From: Glasgow - UK, Irish born

@DBAlex

I don't know if there are many differences, but it's backwards compatible so if you generate code for the OS3.9 version of ReAction it should work fine on 4.0. I suspect the only differences are extra properties being available, and these differences could easily be handled by simply documenting them.

_________________
RobTheNerd.com | InstallerGen | SMBMounter | Atoms-X

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Minuous 
Re: MindGUI - a visual Reaction interface drawing thingy
Posted on 1-Aug-2008 16:08:22
#20 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 30-Oct-2004
Posts: 319
From: Unknown

Yes, one is a superset of the other, so support for both should be fairly easy.
But of course to be really useful the design app would need to run on O3.9, not just the generated program...

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Goto page ( 1 | 2 Next Page )

[ home ][ about us ][ privacy ] [ forums ][ classifieds ] [ links ][ news archive ] [ link to us ][ user account ]
Copyright (C) 2000 - 2019 Amigaworld.net.
Amigaworld.net was originally founded by David Doyle