Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Poll about linux music audio app usability
From: David Olofson (david_AT_gardena.net)
Date: Tue Jun 11 2002 - 05:42:04 EEST
On Tuesday 11 June 2002 04.09, Taybin Rutkin wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Jun 2002, David Olofson wrote:
> > That's basically why I think inventing Yet Another, Although Much
> > Cooler Looking GUI Toolkit would be worth the effort, if it could
> > help cutting GUI development time without dropping chrome and/or
> > features. (Whether or not it's possibly is another issue. Guess
> > I'll just have to try it...)
>
> What do you want that can't be done with themes and/or additional
> widgets?
* "Visual Construction" of new widgets without adding
new widgets to the toolkit. Somewhat like building
stuff with some of those visual multimedia and game
development tools.
* Visual GUI building tools, that preferably let you
"construct" a great deal of the logic behing the
GUI by simply connecting "ports" through "links"
with configurable logic or mathematical functions.
(Nothing insanely sophisticated, though - one might
as well hack real code when it makes sense.)
* No themes in the traditional sense. A theme is part
of the look'n'feel of the GUI, and allowing users
to apply any theme to any GUI puts many restrictions
on what you can safely do with "graphics resources"
and widgets. Think VSTGUI rather than GTK+.
* An API model that allows multiple "clients" within
the same thread. This "taking over the main loop"
crap is totally banned.
* Fast, high quality rendering with OpenGL style
blending effects and the like. (In fact, I'll
probably use OpenGL for the first implementation.
I've been messing a bit with 2D-on-OpenGL anyway,
to implement the SDL API on top of OpenGL.)
In short, I want GUI designers to be able to focus on the *design*,
rather than arbitrary limitations caused by traditional thinking and
obsolete 2D rendering APIs (*).
(*) Well, Microsoft, Apple and others are moving towards
dropping 2D APIs and drivers entirely, and using the
3D subsystems for *everything*. Makes sense, considering
that the majority of video cards in use today are
designed primarilly for 3D acceleration.
//David
.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
`---------------------------> http://www.linuxdj.com/maia/ -'
.- David Olofson -------------------------------------------.
| Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |
`-------------------------------------> http://olofson.net -'
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