[SDL] Geeonx GUI library for LINUX and SDL 1.2

[actsl]

Good work, nice to see that people make widget toolkits.

Sorry, i have not installed or tried that. Just trying to find out more.

The license is said to be Apache license, but there seems to be no source code of the library anywhere.

Works only in Linux and SDL 1.2 as i understand, why SDL 1.2, is it using some old libraries or such, that don't support SDL 2?

There is not much documentation, from the ReadMe i read that it implements windows, buttons and icons. From what you wrote i also read "import forms", so i assume there are also some entry boxes. No scrollbars, text boxes (with dynamically sized arrays), combo boxes, progress bars? That's too minimal i think, there are some things necessary for most of the common user interfaces.

Is it an immediate GUI or retained GUI? By seeing the example it seems to me that it is a some type of retained GUI.

There is also another very minimal widget toolkit for SDL, KiWi, but it too doesn't have text boxes and combo boxes, and it's also restricted in that it's tile-based. But at that it is almost twice bigger than mine, mine is 2400 lines, that one has 5600 lines of code as much as i remember.

But at that, i don't say that widget toolkits smaller than mine are not necessary. These things, they don't compete, there are different categories, most minimal, small, advanced, depending on what one may need. And the others who develop widget toolkits, we may need each other one day. Keep up the good work!

------------------------
kiss_sdl - Simple generic GUI widget toolkit for SDL2 https://github.com/actsl/kiss_sdl

[Leonardo Guilherme]

There is also another very minimal widget toolkit for SDL, KiWi, but it too

Post by actsl
doesn't have text boxes and combo boxes, and it's also restricted in that
it's tile-based. But at that it is almost twice bigger than mine, mine is
2400 lines, that one has 5600 lines of code as much as i remember.

In my defense, albeit larger, KiWi does appear to be more flexible than
KISS, but I don't want to hijack this thread in an argument about tileset
being restricted or, imho, quite the opposite.

For the OP, do you have plans to support widget rendering other than your
shaders? I guess the question I want to ask is, how do you theme Geeonx?

Leonardo

[actsl]

- Geeonx is based on SDL 1.2 because of the great framebuffer support. By using the framebuffer Geeonx applications can run without a X-Server. This is important for embedded systems.

Yeah, someone suggested using my widget toolkit for embedded systems, in some russian forum. It is only for SDL2, but it can be easily modified to use whatever graphics. But someone else said it's not good, it doesn't implement a separate loop for GUI. They don't seem to have an idea of an immediate GUI, and they likely want to use some GTK-like retained GUI for embedded systems, this looks like crazy. In embedded systems i mean, where every processor cycle matters.

------------------------
kiss_sdl - Simple generic GUI widget toolkit for SDL2 https://github.com/actsl/kiss_sdl

[Daniel V]

Hello
the Geeonx GUI-library and the corresponding interface creator Geeonx
Creator can now be downloaded at www.geeonx.org.
The library provides window management, drawing and update of all
GUI-elements like windows,
pulldown-menus, icons, inputforms and buttons of an application.
Currently the library and the Creator are available for LINUX x86 32 bit und
x86 64 bit.
Kind regards
Nik

Maybe some short code examples using Geeonx, and pictures what it
creates on it's homepage would be nice.

// Daniel V.

[David Demelier]

Hello together
First of all you can find a quick guide to program Geeonx applications at
http://www.geeonx.org/geeonx_create.pdf
- The Geeonx library and the tool Geeonx Creator are subject to a
proprietary license.

Why such a choice? I hope you'll reconsider this.

Proprietary license will sorely reduce your target audience, such
people would not use closed source software that they can not hack
(including me).

It's also harder to port the stuff to other platforms.

You will not have any contributions and as you may already know, SDL
has a lots of contributions. Think about everything that you don't
have or don't want. Is it not nice to get people making ports of your
software for several platforms for you? Like, xbox, android, nintendo
ds, atari, whatever.

If you really care about credits, why not using GPL and a commercial
license? Free software developers will be happy to have access to
source code and you can earn money for commercial apps.

Regards,

[Nik]

Hello together

@ Daniel:

When I have time I will improve my introduction to the library. Until then please use geeonx_create.pdf.


@ David:

I spent lots of time over years into the development of the library. I don't like if someone reuse my sourcecode but everybody is allowed to download and execute the library according to the license conditions. I think it is a fair deal :-).

Kind regards

Nik

[actsl]

Post by Nik
I spent lots of time over years into the development of the library. I don't like if someone reuse my sourcecode

I understand you completely, but what concerns my widget toolkit, reusing the source code is the most important, so in any other way than open source it makes no sense.

I appreciate the great work done by everyone who wrote GUI widget toolkits / graphical user interface libraries, and i think that it deserves much more appreciation than it gets. For every single one of these libraries, people put great effort into them.

like i am very poor, maybe just a step away from going to live in the streets, and giving away my work without getting any benefits of it, is not what i think people like me should do.

I don't know who really thought out the concepts of open source and free software. These are great, and there is a lot of right in it. And i'm all for open source. But they are extreme. Like now there exists only two extremes, completely open source and free, or fully closed source and commercial. The right solution should be somewhere in between, so that all, both the developers and the users, get benefit. What about a license that says that the source code will be made open after a certain time, like say 5 years. This may be a solution that gives benefit to all, but no one talks about it, everything ever talked about is either open source or commercial. I wonder why, and whose benefit it is to bring it to such extremes.

Keep up the good work.

------------------------
kiss_sdl - Simple generic GUI widget toolkit for SDL2 https://github.com/actsl/kiss_sdl

[Jonathan Dearborn]

Unfortunately, no nation's economy has figured out how to properly
compensate or encourage open source contributions. Such compensation
doesn't fit with standard methods in capitalism. You still have to take
care of yourself until we get to that point and we can't exactly say what's
best for everyone.

Jonny D

Post by Nik
I spent lots of time over years into the development of the library. I
don't like if someone reuse my sourcecode
I understand you completely, but what concerns my widget toolkit, reusing
the source code is the most important, so in any other way than open source
it makes no sense.
I appreciate the great work done by everyone who wrote GUI widget toolkits
/ graphical user interface libraries, and i think that it deserves much
more appreciation than it gets. For every single one of these libraries,
people put great effort into them.
like i am very poor, maybe just a step away from going to live in the
streets, and giving away my work without getting any benefits of it, is not
what i think people like me should do.
I don't know who really thought out the concepts of open source and free
software. These are great, and there is a lot of right in it. And i'm all
for open source. But they are extreme. Like now there exists only two
extremes, completely open source and free, or fully closed source and
commercial. The right solution should be somewhere in between, so that all,
both the developers and the users, get benefit. What about a license that
says that the source code will be made open after a certain time, like say
5 years. This may be a solution that gives benefit to all, but no one talks
about it, everything ever talked about is either open source or commercial.
I wonder why, and whose benefit it is to bring it to such extremes.
Keep up the good work.
------------------------------
kiss_sdl - Simple generic GUI widget toolkit for SDL2
https://github.com/actsl/kiss_sdl
_______________________________________________
SDL mailing list
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org

[j_post]

Post by Jonathan Dearborn
Unfortunately, no nation's economy has figured out how to properly
compensate or encourage open source contributions.

People don't generally do open source for financial gain. The compensation
received is less tangible than money, but it many ways more rewarding. The
true measure of one's software skills is in having one's work widely accepted
by the community of users.

I began writing FOSS decades ago as a means of paying forward the value of the
free software I use. Small payback for the value I'd received, but one does
what one can.

On the other hand, there sometimes is a financial reward. I've received
unsolicited gifts of "thank you" money ranging from $10 to $600 for my work. I
also received thousands of dollars worth of hardware for free to enable me to
write FOSS to work with said hardware.

And the capstone of it all was the offer to buy stock pre-IPO in a well-known
company (not Microsoft) because of the FOSS I'd written. (In a supreme fit of
irony, said stock was sold not long ago and my now ex-wife received $65,000 as
a result of the work she criticized as "working for free". Some people, hey?)

But perhaps of most importance to those like the OP is that many companies
these days prefer to hire those who've done successful FOSS. If you're good at
it, the doors are wide open in the job market.

Jeff

[Joe Tennies]

One method that has worked is to set a bounty for open sourcing it. This
tended to be bigger projects though (Mozilla and Blender come to mind)

Post by j_post

Post by Jonathan Dearborn
Unfortunately, no nation's economy has figured out how to properly
compensate or encourage open source contributions.

People don't generally do open source for financial gain. The compensation
received is less tangible than money, but it many ways more rewarding. The
true measure of one's software skills is in having one's work widely accepted
by the community of users.
I began writing FOSS decades ago as a means of paying forward the value of the
free software I use. Small payback for the value I'd received, but one does
what one can.
On the other hand, there sometimes is a financial reward. I've received
unsolicited gifts of "thank you" money ranging from $10 to $600 for my work. I
also received thousands of dollars worth of hardware for free to enable me to
write FOSS to work with said hardware.
And the capstone of it all was the offer to buy stock pre-IPO in a well-known
company (not Microsoft) because of the FOSS I'd written. (In a supreme fit of
irony, said stock was sold not long ago and my now ex-wife received $65,000 as
a result of the work she criticized as "working for free". Some people, hey?)
But perhaps of most importance to those like the OP is that many companies
these days prefer to hire those who've done successful FOSS. If you're good at
it, the doors are wide open in the job market.
Jeff
_______________________________________________
SDL mailing list
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org

[actsl]

[quote="Joe Tennies"]One method that has worked is to set a bounty for open sourcing it. This tended to be bigger projects though (Mozilla and Blender come to mind)

Post by Jonathan Dearborn
Unfortunately, no nation's economy has figured out how to properly
compensate or encourage open source contributions.

So this is what i think.

The true measure of one's software skills is in having one's work widely accepted by the community of users.

Wrong. Software is complex. More complex than anything people make likely, like Linux with all the software written in it, is likely the most complex artificially made system on Earth. So rarely is its value estimated by analyzing the code itself. Thus the primary are indirect ways of estimating the value. These can be someone's opinions, or how by someone's understanding the software will benefit one or another field of life. Which can be extremely subjective, like someone's opinion may depend on someone's interests, which may not be the benefits of the users of the software at all. Thus software development is a rare field, where the benefit you get may not depend on the quality of what you do. Means it's not that when you do a good work, you get a good award, like when a carpenter makes a good furniture, everyone sees that it's a good furniture, and has a value. Very different when making software. And users, because the software is complex, often don't even try to use the
software before they get confirmation by the people they consider competent, that the software is good, these are most often not the other users. The users are also mostly not competent in the matters related to the developed software, because many of them use the first time that kind of software, and thus in spite they may have a good experience in using other types of software, they have almost no knowledge about that particular software.

I also received thousands of dollars worth of hardware for free to enable me to write FOSS to work with said hardware.

Yes, someone buy me a high DPI monitor. Because i have a long time a pull request, for changes in my kiss_sdl widget toolkit for high DPI monitors. But i cannot accept it, as i cannot test it, because i have no high DPI monitor. I know others can test it, but i cannot accept it in my code when i cannot test it myself.

But perhaps of most importance to those like the OP is that many companies

these days prefer to hire those who've done successful FOSS. If you're good at
it, the doors are wide open in the job market.

Very wrong. I talked to one IT manager (Finnish), the software they developed in his company, required certain features that needed a lot of development, and they had no experience in his company in that field. I knew there were open source developers, who had participated in development of some very popular and widely used software, were very competent in that field, and were willing to work for pay, at that much cheaper than his company currently paid for the development. I suggested him to hire one of these open source developers, but he said that he will not do that because open source developers cannot be controlled. So not only doesn't open source development help one to get job, but it evidently lowers ones chances to get job. When anyone gets to know that you do open source development, that is, but when you are a developer, you cannot easily hide what you have done, especially when you have done a lot of open source development.

This doesn't mean that i say that doing open source development doesn't give any benefits at all, i only say that in my opinion your arguments of what are the benefits, are wrong, and open source development may not give any personal benefits whatsoever, or may be harmful to a person due to a lot of time and effort spent for that, and a lot of skills acquired that give no benefit at all in ones personal life. Some of the skills that require almost a lifetime to learn. To the extent that this may kill an individual, and most likely there are such cases too, though no one of course talks about them. Thus open source development can kill people. Again, i don't exclude that for some open source development may give personal benefit, i only say how i think it is in general.

But again, why that paradigm, open source or commercial, why does it have to be so extreme, why only that must be considered right, and nothing else. What about a license that says that the source will be made open after 5 years, or then yes, will be made open after a certain amount of money has been received. Why these shouldn't be the options at all?

------------------------
kiss_sdl - Simple generic GUI widget toolkit for SDL2 https://github.com/actsl/kiss_sdl

[j_post]

Post by actsl

The true measure of one's software skills is in having one's work widely
accepted by the community of users.

Wrong.

I think you'll find many who will disagree on that point. Your statement is
your opinion; don't state an opinion as a fact, it makes you look like an
idiot. Just say you disagree. Everyone's entitled to an opinion.

I doubt that many would say Linus Torvalds doesn't have good software skills.
(With the exception of Andrew Tanenbaum.)

Post by actsl
Software is complex.

Of course it is. What does that have to do with any statements I made?

Post by actsl
So rarely is its value estimated by analyzing the code itself.

At what point did I say anything about analyzing code. My claim is that having
one's software accepted and *used* by the community *is* a measure of one's
software skills. This applies to FOSS, not necessarily the kind of crap
Microsoft forces down peoples' throats. And it's not the only measure of one's
skills, just a very good one.

Post by actsl
like when a
carpenter makes a good furniture, everyone sees that it's a good
furniture, and has a value. Very different when making software.

Really? How so?

Post by actsl

But perhaps of most importance to those like the OP is that many companies

these days prefer to hire those who've done successful FOSS. If you're good
at it, the doors are wide open in the job market.
Very wrong. I talked to one IT manager (Finnish),

One sample is not confirmation of a hypothesis. Yet you state your opinion as
if it were fact.

I've seen many job listings that state in the job requirements that FOSS work,
or at least open source work, is a plus. And no, I didn't make a list of them
so don't ask me to provide that info. Do the research yourself.

Post by actsl
Thus open source development can kill people.

You might be right, but I've never heard of a single case where someone died
because of their open source work.

Post by actsl
But again, why that paradigm, open source or commercial, why does it have
to be so extreme, why only that must be considered right, and nothing
else. What about a license that says that the source will be made open
after 5 years, or then yes, will be made open after a certain amount of
money has been received. Why these shouldn't be the options at all?

They are options. At no time did I ever make the claims you're contesting
here. Market your software any way you like.

Jeff