inkface v0.2.5

[Jayesh Salvi]

Hi,

Just uploaded tarballs for v0.2.5 source and docs.

http://altcanvas.googlecode.com/files/inkface_0.2.5.tar.gz
http://altcanvas.googlecode.com/files/inkface_0.2.5_docs.tar.gz

Here are highlights of what's new in v0.2.5

1. Evas backend - As I said in v0.2.4 email, Evas has a backend which is optimized for smooth animations on embedded devices. v0.2.5 implements the Evas backend. For examples on how to use evas with inkface, you can look at inkface2/tests/evas/ directory. Furthermore there is a full-fledged application "etwt" (under inkface2/apps/etwt directory) that demonstrates how to use an Evas+inkface application. I tested it on Openmoko Freerunner and it gives smoother transitions than pygame. I intended to release a maemo app for the same, but Evas wouldn't display cairo surfaces satisfactorily inside diablo SDK - due to mismatched colorspace issues. There are some other quirks with Evas, mostly due to insufficient documentation of python-evas-0.3 or python-ecore-0.3. However this excercise proved that a canola like application can be developed with far easier theming facilities. I will post some screenshots on my blog soon.

2. Widgets - Inkface is different from traditional toolkits, in that it doesn't have rigid widget framework. Anything you can draw in SVG can be used as widget. However this freedom means you have to do many basic things from scratch (text entry, for e.g.). To ease this problem, a new library is added on top of inkface which provides some standardized widgets. Currently it consists of two - Textbox and a virtual Keyboard. These widgets are independent of backends. You can check out inkface2/tests/widgets/txtkbd-{evas,pygame}.py for how to use these widgets. Use of these widgets doesn't take away anything from the looks, because they are still "realized" using the SVG elements that you load from your SVG gui files and pass to the widget constructors. The etwt app makes use of these widgets too.

3. Documentation - Lot of new stuff is added to the docs. The Evas backend and the widgets are all documented. Also the direct SVG access API (inkface.altsvg) is documented.

4. Qt - There was some progress on Qt backend - Added translation support to Qt elements and also linear gradients are supported. Next release will be concentrated on Qt.

5. The inkface libraries will be available in maemo-extras-devel repo. There is already "inkface-core" package in maemo extras-devel. Soon, inkface-pygame, inkface-evas and inkface-widgets will be added.

Let me know if you have any questions after trying out v0.2.5

Thanks,
Jayesh

[Jayesh Salvi]

I repackaged the v0.2.5 tarball with a small fix. Get it from here.

http://altcanvas.googlecode.com/files/inkface_0.2.5_1.tar.gz