GUI toolkit question

[eguy@devio.us]

I'm building an app that operates on tuples (typically pairs) of
hierarchical structures, and i'd like to add a GUI to display my
internal representation of them, and simplify manipulations/operations
on them. My requirements are:

1) Draw a single 3D representation of the hierarchies, and the
connections between them.

2) All objects must be interactive. That is, they should have
left/middle/rightClick behavior; they must be draggable (with rubber
band behavior of their conncections); the user should be able to
highlight a set of them, associate them as a group, then execute
some group operation.

3) I don't need very fancy stuff from the normal widgets. Just
menus, a few buttons, dialog boxes, etc.

4) Don't need complex 3D behavior.

5) Don't need to ever run on Windows, just *nix.

6) May eventually need to either compile the Python, or port
part/all of it to C++.

I started looking into Qt, Wx, Blender, etc, but don't even know if i
have the right questions in mind. Any thoughts, considerations,
recommendations would be much appreciated.

thanks in advance,
Eric

[gsteff]

Re: GUI toolkit question

If you may need to port to another language, you'll probably want to
use a toolkit that helps you store the interface description seperately
from the code. The example I'm most familiar with is libglade for GTK,
although I believe Qt and wx have analagous facilities. I don't do 3D
stuff myself, but I'd guess that your best bet for that will be OpenGL.
wxwidgets 2.1.14 and higher has an OpenGL canvas included with the
stock distribution. OpenGL widgets also exist for GTK, and the
Trolltech website says that OpenGL functionality is included with
QT/X11, though I have no experience with this. Others can offer more
informed advice than I can, but I'd probably reccommend Qt. Very good
documentation, Qt designer rocks, and I'd trust their OpenGl stuff more
than the others.

Greg Steffensen

[Harry George]

Re: GUI toolkit question

eguy@devio.us writes:
[color=blue]
> I'm building an app that operates on tuples (typically pairs) of
> hierarchical structures, and i'd like to add a GUI to display my
> internal representation of them, and simplify manipulations/operations
> on them. My requirements are:
>
> 1) Draw a single 3D representation of the hierarchies, and the
> connections between them.
>
> 2) All objects must be interactive. That is, they should have
> left/middle/rightClick behavior; they must be draggable (with rubber
> band behavior of their conncections); the user should be able to
> highlight a set of them, associate them as a group, then execute
> some group operation.
>
> 3) I don't need very fancy stuff from the normal widgets. Just
> menus, a few buttons, dialog boxes, etc.
>
> 4) Don't need complex 3D behavior.
>
> 5) Don't need to ever run on Windows, just *nix.
>
> 6) May eventually need to either compile the Python, or port
> part/all of it to C++.
>
> I started looking into Qt, Wx, Blender, etc, but don't even know if i
> have the right questions in mind. Any thoughts, considerations,
> recommendations would be much appreciated.
>
> thanks in advance,
> Eric
>
>[/color]

The GUI toolkits (gtk, qt, wx, fltk, etc) generally give you a 3D
window, and then you are on your own. In the window you could use
VRML, X3D, or your own homegrown OpenGL treatment.

Next up the foodchain, there are visualization tools which can link
together lots of nodes and arcs. See:

http://www.opendx.org/index2.php

--
harry.g.george@ boeing.com
6-6M21 BCA CompArch Design Engineering
Phone: (425) 294-4718