PureBasic Forums - English

In trying out the various form designers, I like PureForm the best so far. Can it be skinned?

Also, are their windows custom controls for PureForm, like Dialog boxes, File I/O, etc?

Lastly, how hard is it to add commercially available controls (Gadgets) to PureForm?

Thanks.

Mike

Have you seen PureVision? PureVison Home

Edit: Gnozal will be the one who can best advise about PureForm. Not forgetting that you can use a Visual Designer to get the basic form layout correct and tweak the code from there anyway.

IdeasVacuum wrote:Have you seen PureVision? PureVison Home

Edit: Gnozal will be the one who can best advise about PureForm. Not forgetting that you can use a Visual Designer to get the basic form layout correct and tweak the code from there anyway.

I downloaded the demo of PureVision and it lacks some serious features (like a visible dot grid) AND, more importantly, I cannot stand how you move controls around (right click and drag???????)

PureForm works more like I like to work. I just like the skinnable ability of PureVision.

Mike

As far as I'm aware there is no real way to skin your GUI, unless you know how to do it yourself..

I know ProGUI eventually will be supporting full window skinning, but that is likely a ways off yet, and it does not have a form designer app. (Still one of the best GUI suites for PB though)

You can do skinning in PureVision, so it can be done.

Just not sure how???

Mike

karmacomposer wrote:You can do skinning in PureVision, so it can be done.

Just not sure how???

Mike

It probably just draw onto a Window, that's easy with Purebasic - now if you want to have some transparent parts, you'll need to use some OS API.

Polo wrote:

karmacomposer wrote:You can do skinning in PureVision, so it can be done.

Just not sure how???

Mike

It probably just draw onto a Window, that's easy with Purebasic - now if you want to have some transparent parts, you'll need to use some OS API.

Hmmm. So no way to draw a canvas object (not even sure how to use a canvas object yet) and define it's transparency color? That would be HUGE.

The ONE THING I like in Q7Basic is that the form builder included a dial widget (gadget) for creating knobs. It also has a LED widget for simulating a clock or
hardware LED panel. Even the slider object can be re-skinned to look like hardware faders - so it would be easier to create the GUI front end of a vst/vsti with
that, but the language itself I don't like. The compiler is S...L...O...W and that will just kill project times.

So I would have to figure out how to make animated knobs and sliders from scratch in PureBasic - yes?

Mike

You can make a lot of things using the canvas (believe me! ), though transparency won't work (and you can't put gadgets on top of the canvas - might work or might not, but you're not supposed to)

Polo wrote:You can make a lot of things using the canvas (believe me! ), though transparency won't work (and you can't put gadgets on top of the canvas - might work or might not, but you're not supposed to)

That's tough for me. I have to be able to create custom GUIs. Hmmmm. How can I do this. ALL of my projects will require it.

Mike

karmacomposer wrote: That's tough for me. I have to be able to create custom GUIs. ... ALL of my projects will require it.

PB has many great features, but you will be forced to make those custom GUI's manually. It can be done... canvasgadget, and bitmaps will ease much of the pain, but the hard part will be anything more complicated than a button.

karmacomposer wrote:The ONE THING I like in Q7Basic is that the form builder included a dial widget (gadget) for creating knobs. It also has a LED widget for simulating a clock or
hardware LED panel. Even the slider object can be re-skinned to look like hardware faders - so it would be easier to create the GUI front end of a vst/vsti with
that, but the language itself I don't like.

There's example codes in these forums for making dials, knobs and LED displays:

Knob gadget (needs updating) -> http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 913#p91913
LED display -> http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 04#p384104
Bezier display -> http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 14&t=50636

Maybe these can get you started.

I have successfully used both Skincrafter and Appface with PureBasic applications. It doesnt matter which Form designer you use, just add one of those skinning libraries to your software and you can have fully skinned (windows) applications with PureBasic. It just takes a few additional lines of code.

You can even find PureBasic on the Appface website as officially supported language.

Ofc. you could do it all by yourself and you can find several attempts on these forums, but afaik none of them ever got anywhere serious.

you can't put gadgets on top of the canvas - might work or might not, but you're not supposed to

I found it to work OK but hard work covering all eventualities - then along came Rashad with a really elegant solution (Windows only)
Canvas as Container Gadget
Given Rashad's code, it might be possible for the MAC/Linux experts to define something too.

DIY Form skinning: http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 13&t=40064