Tk & Tile on Vista
Synic
just had a chance to test with a Vista system, so I thought I'd provide
a quick bit of feedback.
Tk seems fine. The menubar has a slightly different appearance but is
roughly the same size and shape as on XP.
Unfortunately for Tile, the xpnative theme isn't supported (and will
generate fatal errors). The older winnative theme works though, plus
of course the multiplatform themes like default, alt, etc.
(The above were tested only with the Vista Basic and Windows Classic
desktop themes as my video card doesn't support Aero.)
Larry W. Virden
> (The above were tested only with the Vista Basic and Windows Classic
> desktop themes as my video card doesn't support Aero.)
Please be sure to submit bug reports at http://sf.net/projects/tktoolkit/
so that this information isn't lost.
Synic
If I were keeping Vista around for more than 1-2 days, yep, I would. But
it's a truly horrible version of Windows. I'm glad I only installed it on
a spare disk I had lying around.
From what I've seen in my own Tcl apps though, there's nothing in there
that will cause problems for the Tk toolkit. (Tile probably needs a
vistanative theme though. I wouldn't hazard a guess as to how much or
little work that would take to put in place.)
Andrés García
In case someone is curious, I have taken a few snapshots of
Getleft running in a Vista virtual machine:
http://personal1.iddeo.es/andresgarci/getleft/images/Vista1.png
http://personal1.iddeo.es/andresgarci/getleft/images/Vista2.png
http://personal1.iddeo.es/andresgarci/getleft/images/Vista3.png
http://personal1.iddeo.es/andresgarci/getleft/images/Vista4.png
http://personal1.iddeo.es/andresgarci/getleft/images/Vista5.png
http://personal1.iddeo.es/andresgarci/getleft/images/Vista6.png
They are about 600k each.
The 8.5 based starpack seems to run without any problems at all
using the winnative theme.
The theme doesn't look as good as native apps, for example, the
progress bar is a flat blue instead of flashing green and the
radio buttons get a black dot instead of a blue one.
But it looks well enough, I would say it is better than Tk
in WinXP.
Andres
Darren New
> progress bar is a flat blue instead of flashing green
I never quite understood the point of making something like a progress
bar all that eye-catching, myself. I really don't want to be distracted
from what I'm working on by some other window jumping up and down saying
"I'm not done yet! I'm only a third of the way done! I won't be ready
for a couple more minutes! Look, look!" Almost as bad as those
obnoxious flashing shaking banner ads.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
"Let the wine breathe" does not mean to blow bubbles.
Trust me: your wine does not need CPR.
Kevin Walzer
> Andrés García wrote:
>> progress bar is a flat blue instead of flashing green
>
> I never quite understood the point of making something like a progress
> bar all that eye-catching, myself. I really don't want to be distracted
> from what I'm working on by some other window jumping up and down saying
> "I'm not done yet! I'm only a third of the way done! I won't be ready
> for a couple more minutes! Look, look!" Almost as bad as those
> obnoxious flashing shaking banner ads.
>
The point isn't aesthetics, but user expectations, which among other
considerations can influence the user's decision to pay for your
application. Tile goes a long way to making Tk programs consistent with
user expectations, at least on Windows (XP) and the Mac, and that's why
I use Tile extensively in my own commercial development.
proc predictSharewareSales {} {
set myplatform [tk windowingsystem]
switch $myplatform {
'x11' {
if {myapp_appearance == $myplatform || myapp_appearance != $myplatform} {
mysales == 0; #not a viable platform for shareware development; I
can't compete with apt-get install myapp
}
}
'win32' {
if {myapp_appearance == $myplatform} {
mysales == 10; #windows users generally prefer platform-conformant
stuff to non-platform conformant stuff
}
if {myapp_appearance != $myplatform} {
mysales == 2; #windows users tolerate odd or out-of-style stuff if it's
functional or nothing prettier is available
}
}
'aqua' {
if {myapp_appearance == $myplatform} {
mysales == 10; #mac users strongly prefer platform-conformant stuff to
non-platform conformant stuff
}
if {myapp_appearance != $myplatform} {
mysales == 0; #mac users don't pay for stuff that looks out of place on
the platform
}
}
}
--
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com
Darren New
> The point isn't aesthetics, but user expectations,
I was wondering out loud why MS would make an eye-catching progress bar.
I wasn't criticizing your decision to make your app look the way the
user expects. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
bgeer
>Andrés García wrote:
>> progress bar is a flat blue instead of flashing green
>I never quite understood the point of making something like a progress
>bar all that eye-catching, myself. I really don't want to be distracted
>from what I'm working on by some other window jumping up and down saying
>"I'm not done yet! I'm only a third of the way done! I won't be ready
>for a couple more minutes! Look, look!" Almost as bad as those
>obnoxious flashing shaking banner ads.
OTOH, I've had my share of moments wondering if the computer
[especially Windows] is doing anything at all, or just hung.
Yeah, I don't want a distracting progress bar, but a subtle,
gentle "I haven't crashed yet" confirmation is nice...:-)
--
<> Robert Geer & Donna Tomky | |||| We sure |||| <>
<> bg...@xmission.com | == == find it == == <>
<> dto...@xmission.com | == == enchanting == == <>
<> Albuquerque, NM USA | |||| here! |||| <>
Darren New
> OTOH, I've had my share of moments wondering if the computer
> [especially Windows] is doing anything at all, or just hung.
I also have to wonder why the "paper flying from network to folder"
animation continues on even after I pull the network cable out. If it
were actually an "I'm still alive" rather than eyecandy, I could
understand it.
mat...@gmail.com
Vista APIs for drawing controls if there are any. Seems that the
"Windows XP "Visual Styles" API" isn't running at all on Vista.
Searched MSDN but it is hopeless!
Second question: is anyone working on this?
/Mats
Pat Thoyts
I did try vista quite a long time ago (beta1 I think) and tile didn't
work well then. I see nothing has changed.
As I don't have access to a machine which will run the vista Aero
theme this isn't something I can fix. From my reading of the
documentation it seems to me that Vista should work with the xpnative
theme as we are just calling the theming api's but evidently something
is wrong and I don't have the resources to investigate.
So if anyone wants to donate hardware I could get on with this. If not
and you have Vista you'll be wanting to check out:
cvs -d:pserver:anon...@tktable.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tktable co tile
The win/xpTheme.c file should point in the right direction.
--
Pat Thoyts http://www.patthoyts.tk/
To reply, rot13 the return address or read the X-Address header.
PGP fingerprint 2C 6E 98 07 2C 59 C8 97 10 CE 11 E6 04 E0 B9 DD
mat...@gmail.com
> mats...@gmail.com writes:
> >If I may focus on tile: does anyone know where to find info on the new
> >Vista APIs for drawing controls if there are any. Seems that the
> >"Windows XP "Visual Styles" API" isn't running at all on Vista.
> >Searched MSDN but it is hopeless!
> >Second question: is anyone working on this?
>
> >/Mats
>
> I did try vista quite a long time ago (beta1 I think) and tile didn't
> work well then. I see nothing has changed.
>
> As I don't have access to a machine which will run the vista Aero
> theme this isn't something I can fix. From my reading of the
> documentation it seems to me that Vista should work with the xpnative
> theme as we are just calling the theming api's but evidently something
> is wrong and I don't have the resources to investigate.
>
So you say that no new APIs are needed for the controls. Sounds
reasonable
but you never know with MS.
> So if anyone wants to donate hardware I could get on with this. If not
> and you have Vista you'll be wanting to check out:
I don't have it but those laptops can be obtained pretty cheap
nowadays.
Maybe I should get one?
> cvs -d:pserver:anonym...@tktable.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tktable co tile
> The win/xpTheme.c file should point in the right direction.
>
I looked at LoadXPThemeProcs() and there are quite a few things that
are needed
to succesfully load the XP theme. Should the dll name actually be
hardcoded:
*phlib = handle = LoadLibrary("uxtheme.dll");
/Mats
PS: MS is distributing a free dev env it seems:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/downloads/
George Peter Staplin
> I, and a few others, have asked about how it all looks on Vista. I've
> just had a chance to test with a Vista system, so I thought I'd provide
> a quick bit of feedback.
>
> Tk seems fine. The menubar has a slightly different appearance but is
> roughly the same size and shape as on XP.
>
> Unfortunately for Tile, the xpnative theme isn't supported (and will
> generate fatal errors). The older winnative theme works though, plus
> of course the multiplatform themes like default, alt, etc.
LOL! Great job Microsoft! Do the world a favor and put that DRM'd
Vista into the garbage where it belongs, that is if Vista will let you.
I know that Microsoft isn't interested in letting you control your own
computer. If Tcl/Tk was portable and popular MS would kill it off, one
way or another. Look at what they did to Java. They intentionally
tried to kill that, and the emails from a recent lawsuit (which were
taken offline a while back, due to a settlement) proved it.
"Look Tk finally has XP native widgets!" And they don't work in
Vista!
Cheerio,
-George
Georgios Petasis
Dear Mats,
I am trying (yes it's painful :D) to move my working environment to
vista 64, and since I have a somewhat working vista build enviromnet, I
wanted to debug this issue of tile not working on vista.
It turned out that tile *does* work on vista (as all apps that use xp
themes do) by simply updating the code that checks the operating system
version. The previous check was:
if (os.dwMajorVersion <= 5 && os.dwMinorVersion >= 1))
which failed as under Vista os.dwMajorVersion is 6 and
os.dwMinorVersion is 0. Changing this check to:
if ( os.dwMajorVersion > 5 ||
(os.dwMajorVersion == 5 && os.dwMinorVersion >= 1))
fixes the problem. Screenshots of the tile demo under vista can be found at:
http://www.ellogon.org/~petasis/vista-tile/
George
Pat Thoyts
>O/H mat...@gmail.com 苇纬衔毕蔚:
Excellent. I thought that it should work but without useful hardware
to test on its a bit difficult to sort out. Thank you for following
this up.