Can TK be iSexy?
alex...@gmail.com
like a throw back to the sixties mainframe era?
Uwe Klein
> Is it possible and easy to make Apple-esq sexy rather than looking
> like a throw back to the sixties mainframe era?
>
If you lack humility for this you may
find an easy solution in Tile Tk:
http://wiki.tcl.tk/11075
http://tktable.sf.net/tile/
uwe
Kevin Walzer
--
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com
Bryan Oakley
> Is it possible and easy to make Apple-esq sexy rather than looking
> like a throw back to the sixties mainframe era?
>
Possible, arguably yes. Easy, arguably no. The tile widget set gives us
a set of widgets that will look right at home on a Mac (and no toolkit
is easier to use than Tk+tile on any platform), but a lot of the
"Apple-esq sexy" is a matter of good design. Good design, it probably
goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway), is hard.
I will say it's difficult or nearly impossible to make a Tk GUI look
just like iTunes or iMovie, but I also know it's possible to make GUIs
that look as good as or better than textedit and many 3rd party apps.
suchenwi
GUI:
- create a canvas
- display an image as background
- add custom items (buttons, menus etc.) as images
- use canvas bindings to implement the desired behavior
I've done this several times at work. It takes some fiddling, but in
general not very much.
Mark Roseman
emulate an existing fairly sophisticated behavior is not exactly a quick
stroll in the park.
It's like saying Tk is powerful and can do anything - we give you a 1
AND a 0!
Mark
Donal K. Fellows
> Ha, I had a good laugh at this ... while technically true, using it to
> emulate an existing fairly sophisticated behavior is not exactly a quick
> stroll in the park.
>
> It's like saying Tk is powerful and can do anything - we give you a 1
> AND a 0!
That's not *quite* true! We give people big boxes full of both of them
that they can put together their own way. This is by contrast to giving
people just one of each. ;-)
Donal.
Uwe Klein
The contrasting gift here would be
a giftbox full of ONEs,
in matching sets of light blue and pink.
>
> Donal.
uwe
Mats
> Is it possible and easy to make Apple-esq sexy rather than looking
> like a throw back to the sixties mainframe era?
/Mats
Larry W. Virden
> Is it possible and easy to make Apple-esq sexy rather than looking
> like a throw back to the sixties mainframe era?
I wonder if the original poster ever actually saw sixties mainframe
era interfaces. Because, back then, _if_ you saw the one of the
handful of programs which were not hardcopy oriented, what you saw was
plain text displayed on a dumb terminal. No windows, no scroll bars,
etc.
So anything that Tk has EVER been able to do is sexier than the
sixties mainframe era.
Is the _real_ question really "is there a way that, without having to
code anything special, I can get my program to magically start looking
like any of the sexy GUI applications being sold by Apple"?
Kevin Walzer
> Is the _real_ question really "is there a way that, without having to
> code anything special, I can get my program to magically start looking
> like any of the sexy GUI applications being sold by Apple"?
Considering that I use Tk and target the Mac platform only, I'm
interested in this question.
The answer is, yes, at least to a degree, but it's largely a matter of
application design.
Out of the box, Tk looks strange on Apple. It takes some Mac-specific
techniques to get things like the application menu, help menu, keyboard
shortcuts, tooltips, and so on, right. Even Tile, which adds a lot of
the Aqua goodness that standard Tk lacks, is imperfect. It uses
old-school (10.2) tabs in the notebook widget, for instance, and doesn't
get scrollbars right.
So making a Mac-style application (on the Mac) is a matter of getting
little details right, and mixing and matching widget sets. In my own
apps, I use a combination of Tk, Tile, Tablelist, and BWidgets to get
something that's reasonably Maclike. See
http://www.codebykevin.com/packetstream-running.png for an example. Not
perfect, but this application (and others like it that I've developed)
does sell. I'm slowly building a shareware/commercial software business,
using Tk as my GUI toolkit, on OS X, where users are more picky about
their applications' conformance to platform guidelines than anywhere else.
If the OP is asking a different kind of question--how to achieve the
look of specific Mac applications, such as iTunes/iPhoto, regardless of
platform--then the answer, again, is yes, within limits. Some effects
that Apple uses in its applications, such as gradient backgrounds, are
not commonly done in Tk, but libraries/packages to support such effects
do exist. Careful selection of design elements such as icons and colors
can go pretty far in imitating that look and feel. Tk is *extremely*
configurable, so if you get a competent UI designer and a developer
together, I don't see why Tk couldn't be used to create an iApp.
(Personally, the look of these applications isn't to my taste, but
that's a matter of taste.)
Chris McDonald
>On Apr 22, 11:30 am, "alex....@gmail.com" <alex....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is it possible and easy to make Apple-esq sexy rather than looking
>> like a throw back to the sixties mainframe era?
>I wonder if the original poster ever actually saw sixties mainframe
>era interfaces. Because, back then, _if_ you saw the one of the
>handful of programs which were not hardcopy oriented, what you saw was
>plain text displayed on a dumb terminal. No windows, no scroll bars,
>etc.
Of course, Ivan Sutherland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Sutherland)
would strongly disagree.
--
Chris.
bgeer
>On Apr 22, 11:30 am, "alex....@gmail.com" <alex....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is it possible and easy to make Apple-esq sexy rather than looking
>> like a throw back to the sixties mainframe era?
>I wonder if the original poster ever actually saw sixties mainframe
>era interfaces. Because, back then, _if_ you saw the one of the
>handful of programs which were not hardcopy oriented, what you saw was
>plain text displayed on a dumb terminal. No windows, no scroll bars,
>etc.
Card punch?????
--
<> Robert Geer & Donna Tomky | |||| We sure |||| <>
<> bg...@xmission.com | == == find it == == <>
<> dto...@xmission.com | == == enchanting == == <>
<> Albuquerque, NM USA | |||| here! |||| <>
Steve Landers
> Ha, I had a good laugh at this ... while technically true, using it to
> emulate an existing fairly sophisticated behavior is not exactly a quick
> stroll in the park.
>
> It's like saying Tk is powerful and can do anything - we give you a 1
> AND a 0!
Now now Mark ... if we take that approach we'd say that all web apps
suck. And we know that isn't the case (I know of at least two that don't
suck, and there might be others)
;-)
Steve
Larry W. Virden
> Of course, Ivan Sutherland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Sutherland)
> would strongly disagree.
Perhaps he would - all I can say is that the mainframes that _I_ was
around in the 60s didn't have much of an interface. Lots of cables
hanging out all over places that had to be modified... or
_patched_ ... to get the program they represented modified.
Shoot, Tk provides a better interface than the desktops of the 70s and
80s, let alone the mainframes of the 60s.
alex...@gmail.com
mainframe; and yes. Can I get my application to look good without
actually changing too much code?
The whole theming thing is interesting; but until the OS and TK agree
on how widgets looks, getting a TK application to look good on, say,
Vista, OS-X or Beryl is a way away.
What I want to make is a touch screen kiosk application which looks
good and do it quickly. I doesn't have to blend with the OS. What
would be nice would be a totally graphical interface; no hard edges. I
think the canvas solution is a great idea. You could maximum the main
window and remove it's title bar and enforcea global grab. Then add a
nice whie canvas and start sticking some no relief buttons to it. Add
a nice roll over effect to the buttons and some nice graphics of (in
my case) horses to it.
Bob your unkle. A sexy rocking TK app.
Bruce Hartweg
to take over the whole screen
Bruce
Christian Gollwitzer
> Larry's totally right on both counts. I've never seen a sixties era
> mainframe; and yes. Can I get my application to look good without
> actually changing too much code?
Are you aware of tile and ttk in Tk8.5? Is this still not enough
eye-candy for your needs?
Christian
Larry W. Virden
bayreuth.de> wrote:
Notice that Alex mentioned Vista and Beryl. Does Ttk work, out of the
box, fitting into those two OSes?
Joe English
>
>Notice that Alex mentioned Vista and Beryl. Does Ttk work, out of the
>box, fitting into those two OSes?
Yes, with caveats:
Tile releases up to and including 0.7.8 have a minor bug,
fixed in the just-released Tk 8.5a6 and in Tile CVS.
With the fix, apps will get Vista-style controls; without
it, they'll fall back to Windows 2K-style controls.
Beryl/Compiz isn't an OS, it's a collection of enhancements to the
X server and desktop environment. Ttk works just fine in that environment,
but doesn't take any special advantage of it either. Out-of-the-box,
Ttk on X11 still looks like 2002-era Gtk+, as per design.
--Joe English
Donal K. Fellows
> Beryl/Compiz isn't an OS, it's a collection of enhancements to the
> X server and desktop environment. Ttk works just fine in that environment,
> but doesn't take any special advantage of it either. Out-of-the-box,
> Ttk on X11 still looks like 2002-era Gtk+, as per design.
We should note that if someone contributes a new style that takes
advantage of Beryl/Compiz features, we'll be very thankful. :-)
Donal.
Georgios Petasis
What exactly are these "Beryl/Compiz" features? When I hear "compiz" the
only thing that comes into my mind is some screenshots I have seen in
magazines, about a window manager (?) that shows the virtual desktops on
a cube that somebody can turn around (in order to select a desktop).
Is it something more? Are there any screenshots available?
(My linux is a fedora core 6. I haven't event searched if these things
are available there...)
George
Pat Thoyts
>O/H Donal K. Fellows 苇纬衔毕蔚:
So far the only feature I have found that becomes available under a
composing window manager is transparency using wm attributes -alpha
starts working. This is present for Windows and Aqua and and with a
suitable window manager becomes available for X.
Otherwise these window managers are all about wobbly windows and stuff
and not really applicable. More important is to get a Gtk+ native
theme sorted that uses Gtk+ apis to draw tile elements.
--
Pat Thoyts http://www.patthoyts.tk/
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