[linux-audio-dev] Re: Project: modular synth editor

Steve Harris S.W.Harris at ecs.soton.ac.uk
Sat Jan 17 11:39:03 UTC 2004


On Sat, Jan 17, 2004 at 12:13:42 +0100, Dave Griffiths wrote:
> > A system like this for describing plugin GUIs using XML, PNGs and OpenGL
> > (but extensible in C + OpenGL) is on my list of future projects, but
> > wether it will ever get to the top is another matter. The general 
> > lack of interest in linux UIs, and lack of skilled graphic designers 
> > with time to spare is a bit of a problem.
> 
> I don't know it, and it's not opengl, but would something based on XUL work?
> They've probably done most of the hard work already.

It would work, XUL + ECMAScript is quite a powerful environment (I've built
some significant apps in it), but it only really makes text based widgets
easy to manipulate, and its sloooow.
 
> I'm currently working on an opengl user interface for a game I'm writing. Once
> you get a scenegraph set up (so child widgets inherit parent transforms etc)
> it's not too hard to get something working.

Agreed. I'm half ported meterbridge to OpenGL and the code is actually
simpler (and /much/ faster, even on my ageing laptop) than the native SDL
drawing code.

I wouldnt want to use OpenGL if you had a lot of things like scrolling
text panes, but plugin UIs are mostly sliders, meters and graph displays
which are all easy to do in OpenGL + pixmaps.

- Steve



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