PureBasic Forums - English

I'm really interested in this topic. GUI design in general really, but as far as making custom gadgets or Windows I have had very poor luck searching. Google has been very poor help on the matter, as I find lots of similar questions from people wondering how to make their own GUI for a game, or their own widget for something. With basically no real answers, or sarcasm about "why bother to reinvent the wheel" etc..


But I have never been able to find an article or any kind of info on how to actually build a GUI from scratch (i.e for a game or something) and what is involved in that..


i.e Code examples on HOW you implement functionality for Copy/Cut/Paste, word formatting/wrapping, using actual Fonts (and/or Bitmap fonts) etc.. Just really going over a system as a whole from the ground up..

I see tons of people with frameworks of their own and this or that, but no one seems to want to share the secrets on how the hard bits are accomplished (Anyone can paint a picture of a Window in some form to the screen, but adding functionality is another beast).

Do you have any links to good reading you could share? Or any book recommendations?

Hi Zach!

You don't need to read anything to do what I've done, and I'm not a very good programmer.
Using PB's command set, it is very easy to create a custom gadget, you just need to know what you want to achieve and not forget the details.
For the editing system I had to scrach my head a few times to get things working like i wanted to, as it's not an easy task to get editing with font formatting working

So, can't send you articles/books on this subject as I didn't read any

Hi,

Is your source well commented? Are you willing to share it?

I dunno if I'd actually pick up anything but, who knows.

Hi, no sorry the source is not commented at all, and is 4500 lines of code.
I wont be sharing it as I am not sure of what to do with this, I'll make sure, when PB4.6 is released, to decide

Zach, have a read of one or more of Charles Petzold's books, especially 'Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software'.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735611319

The PB guys should re-implement the ListIconGadget using the canvas and expand on it's capabilities.

If someone does that, maybe he will want to add it to this project : CustomGadget
I will soon post it in this forum, in English, I'm waiting to have more command and gadget.

also, if some test on mac could be done, I would appreciate the feedback, because now it's not tested on mac ;'(

@Polo : real Interesting works , I wanted to do this job one day, (don't have the time now XD )

I think the gridgadget is great, the possibilities are so many - not only excel type programs but it can replace the old grey listicongadget in general i think.
i would love to get my hands on that code and try make it better. its really a fantastic piece you made there so far, nomatter if the code looks like crap.
I talked about doing something similar in the mac forum here, since on mac you are extremely limited with listicongadget (no colors etc)....
Just keep up the good work

jesperbrannmark wrote:I think the gridgadget is great, the possibilities are so many - not only excel type programs but it can replace the old grey listicongadget in general i think.
i would love to get my hands on that code and try make it better. its really a fantastic piece you made there so far, nomatter if the code looks like crap.
I talked about doing something similar in the mac forum here, since on mac you are extremely limited with listicongadget (no colors etc)....
Just keep up the good work

Cheers mate!
As you said, the possibilities with this gadget are endless, it can be used as an excel type program, handling database data and such, etc...
I'll make sure to make it better with more functionnalities but i'd rather wait that PB4.6 is out, I've already done too much workaround to try to fix some bugs from the canvasgadget, scrollbars etc

IdeasVacuum wrote:Zach, have a read of one or more of Charles Petzold's books, especially 'Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software'.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735611319

Thanks, I will look into that.

Hi Polo

any progress with your interesting cross platform grid ... looking very promising; am willing to buy whenever is ready

cheers

Hello Said,

I must say I posponed at the time the development of this gadget, as PB Canvas gadget simply wasn't ready.
In the meantime I developed the TextEditGadget which enhanced some of the features I started working on for this Grid Gadget.

I'd need to get back to it, which shouldn't ask for too much, I'll see what I can do

Polo, if you don't mind me asking...

PB's scrollbar gadgets; how did you manage to track the user dragging the scroll-thumb without using API? I ask because, well, the last time I checked, PB's event loop did not report these events. Has this changed for PB 4.6 RC 2?

Nice gadget by the way, very nice!

srod wrote:Polo, if you don't mind me asking...

PB's scrollbar gadgets; how did you manage to track the user dragging the scroll-thumb without using API? I ask because, well, the last time I checked, PB's event loop did not report these events. Has this changed for PB 4.6 RC 2?

Nice gadget by the way, very nice!

I used API, but thanks to various examples on the forum I still kept the cross platform capabilities.
However the Mac workaround to get these events isn't good as scrollbars must be created from scratch. I hope the PB Team will fix a small issue in the PB Mac scrollbars so that I can use them on this gadget

Thanks for the reply. Figured that you had to use API. A shame as this is a real limitation of PB's scrollbar gadgets.