The future of Fluid.

[melcher....@googlemail.com]

I am very torn about the future of Fluid after 1.4.0 . In a way, current Fluid works "just fine". It generates files, its UI is bearable. Its documentation is minimal. But it does the job.

However, it is the only real app that we publish with our library, and as such, shouldn't it be somewhat of a flagship project for using FLTK? Also, the code ist quite dense and somewhat difficult to maintain.

So my big questions is: do you guys think that this is worth the effort? Do we have any idea how many people are actually using Fluid? Could improving Fluid increase our overall user base considerably? Or should I just let "good enough" alone?

 - Matthias

For completeness, here are a few ideas, if the reader is still interested:

• Single window UI. I believe that the "many window" layout is outdated
  
• Alignment options. I have a ton of features I picked up in CAD programs that I would like to transfer.
• Remove all modal dialogs. The modal dialogs should be new tabs in the widget browser, so that changes become immediately visible.
• Smarter input fields. For example, typing +3 in the X field should move all selected widgets three units to the right
• More and better custom shell commands, so apps can be compiled and run from within Fluid
• Have a system to add custom widgets to FLTK and have matching plugins for Fluid.
• Support for sample projects that can be built and run with the shell commands above.

[Greg Ercolano]

On 1/22/22 1:11 PM, 'melcher....@googlemail.com' via fltk.coredev wrote:

I am very torn about the future of Fluid after 1.4.0 . In a way, current Fluid works "just fine". It generates files, its UI is bearable. Its documentation is minimal. But it does the job.

However, it is the only real app that we publish with our library, and as such, shouldn't it be somewhat of a flagship project for using FLTK? Also, the code ist quite dense and somewhat difficult to maintain.

    IMHO not sure it's worth the effort.

    Remember that FLTK is doing well not because it's trying to be Qt (keep with the latest UI trends)
    and is a small GUI kit for doing simple UIs, and in some cases folks stretch it to the max as
    fancy UIs. (Like some of those really nice audio mixing/midi/whatever they are apps people
    have sent pretty screenshots of)

    That said if someone was motivated, sure, but I think fluid is good at what it does
    and keeps expectations low which I think is a good thing for this scale project.

    To try to compete with advanced IDEs I think is beyond the scope of FLTK,
    and would be out of balance with what the tool kit provides.

    Just IMHO, but after all this time I've seen FLTK 2.x come and go while 1.x chugs on,
    I don't see anyone screaming for fluid improvements. 1.x is amazing in what it can do
    and fits a nitch of small and light, and fluid certainly is that..!

    I'd say a better effort might be some extended video tutorial to demo fluid's newer
    and advanced features.. something I never got around to doing. (Matt you might be
    good for that, or we can work on it together if you want)

[Lauri Kasanen]

On Sat, 22 Jan 2022 13:11:30 -0800 (PST)
"'melcher....@googlemail.com' via fltk.coredev"

<fltkc...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> I am very torn about the future of Fluid after 1.4.0 . In a way, current
> Fluid works "just fine". It generates files, its UI is bearable. Its
> documentation is minimal. But it does the job.
>
> However, it is the only real app that we publish with our library, and as
> such, shouldn't it be somewhat of a flagship project for using FLTK? Also,
> the code ist quite dense and somewhat difficult to maintain.

If you're going to change the UI drastically, please do it in a
separate app ("fluid2" or whatever), leaving the current fluid alone
and working. Massive GUI changes hurt users and are rightly unliked.

As it's a dev tool for laying out GUIs, I disagree it should be a
flagship. It should be functional.

- Lauri

[Ian MacArthur]

On 23 Jan 2022, at 07:06, Lauri Kasanen wrote:
>
> On Sat, 22 Jan 2022 13:11:30 -0800 (PST)
> "'melcher...."

> <fltkc...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>> I am very torn about the future of Fluid after 1.4.0 . In a way, current
>> Fluid works "just fine". It generates files, its UI is bearable. Its
>> documentation is minimal. But it does the job.
>>
>> However, it is the only real app that we publish with our library, and as
>> such, shouldn't it be somewhat of a flagship project for using FLTK? Also,
>> the code ist quite dense and somewhat difficult to maintain.
>
> If you're going to change the UI drastically, please do it in a
> separate app ("fluid2" or whatever), leaving the current fluid alone
> and working. Massive GUI changes hurt users and are rightly unliked.

That might be a good point, actually.
Might be best to keep the extant fluid, which works OK, and if there is a “better fluid" then naming it fluid2 or whatever would make it clear it had been changed...

[melcher....@googlemail.com]

Thanks for your opinions, Ian, Lauri, and Greg. You are absolutely right. I have a tendency to overshoot the goal. I will leave Fluid mostly the way it is. Still want to clean up the settings dialogs and remove global administrative settings. Everything else will be after 1.4.0 and be just minor cosmetic stuff.

I also like the idea of making a few videos.