Welcome to the GLUI User Interface Library, v2.3!
March 22, 2005
-------------------------------------------------
This distribution contains the latest community-maintained fork of the
GLUI Library. It is based on the GLUI v2.1 beta version from Paul
Rademacher (http://www.cs.unc.edu/~rademach/glui/) plus the
compatibility changes made by Nigel Stewart in his "GLUI v2.2"
(http://www.nigels.com/glt/glui) In accordance with the LGPL under
which the library is released (according to Paul's web page at least),
these changes are available to everyone in the community.
WARNING: This version (2.3) introduces some incompatible changes with
previous versions!!
CHANGES:
----------------------------------
- GLUI_String is now a std::string
This is the main source of most incopatibilities, but I felt it was
a necessary change, because the previous usage of a fixed-sized
buffer was just too unsafe. I myself was bitten a few times passing
a char* buffer of insufficient size into GLUI as a live variable.
It is still possible to use a char buffer, but it is not recommended.
If you used GLUI_String before as a live var type, the easiest way
to get your code compiling again is to change those to "char
buf[300]". The better way, though, is to update your code to treat
it as a std::string.
For instance, if you used to pass mystr to functions that take
'const char*', now use mystr.c_str() method, instead.
If you used strcpy(mystr, b) to set the value, now just do mystr=b.
If you used sprintf(mystr,...) to set the value, now do
glui_format_string(mystr,...).
If you used to clear the string with mystr[0]='\0', now just clear
it with mystr="".
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- Enhanced GLUI_EditText
Control keys can be used for navigation and control. The bindings
are bash-like: Ctrl-B for previous char, Ctrl-F for forward char, etc.
bindings. Also control keys that aren't bound to commands are
simply ignored, whereas before they would be inserted as invisible
characters.
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- Added GLUI_CommandLine class
This is a GLUI_EditText with a history mechanism.
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- New, more object oriented construction API.
Now instead of calling
glui->add_button_to_panel( panel, "my button", myid, mycallback );
you should just call the button constructor:
new GLUI_Button( panel, "my button", myid, mycallback );
And similarly to add it to a GLUI instead of a panel, rather than:
glui->add_button( glui, "my button", myid, mycallback );
just call the constructor with the GLUI as the first argument:
new GLUI_Button( glui, "my button", myid, mycallback );
The old scheme is now deprecated, but still works. The benefit of
this new scheme is that now the GLUI class doesn't have to know
about all the different types of GLUI_Controls that exist.
Previously GLUI had to both know about all the controls, and know
how to initialize them. Now the responsibility for initialization
belongs to the GLUI_Control subclasses themselves, where it
belongs. Additionally it means that you can create your own
GLUI_Control subclasses which will be on equal footing with the
built-in controls, whereas before any user-created controls would
always be "second-class citizens" since they would have to be
constructed differently from the built-ins.
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- Removed need for type-declaring arguments when argment type suffices.
This effects GLUI_Spinner and GLUI_EditText (and GLUI_CommandLine?).
For example, instead of calling
new GLUI_Spinner( glui, "myspin", GLUI_SPINNER_INT, &live_int_var );
you can just omit the GLUI_SPINNER_INT part, because the type of the
live_int_var tells the compiler which type you want.
new GLUI_Spinner( glui, "myspin", &live_int_var );
If you're not using a live, var, you can still use the
GLUI_SPINNER_INT type argument. See glui.h for all the new
constructor signatures. Note this only works with the new
construction API, not with the old "add_blah_to_panel" style of
API.
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- GLUI_Rotation uses your matrix live-variable now.
GLUI used to ignore the matrix in your live variable. This version
doesn't ignore it, so you'll need to set it to the identity matrix
yourself if that's what you want it to start as. There could
probably be some improvements to this API, though.
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- Improvements to 'const' usage.
Most char*'s in GLUI functions used to be non-const even when the
functions did not modify the string. I changed everywhere
appropriate to use const char* instead.
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- Updated license info in the headers
Paul's web page says that GLUI is LGPL, but that wasn't declared in
the code itself. I've modified all the headers with the standard
LGPL notice.
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- Updated examples for the API changes
----------------------------------
- Created project files for Visual Studio .NET (MSVC7.1)
That's about it. Enjoy!
If you find yourself with too much time on your hands, the things I
think would be most useful for future improvements to GLUI would be:
1. The GLUI_TextBox and GLUI_Tree definitely need some work, still.
2. Clipboard integration under Windows/X-Win. I have some code that
works on Win32 that I once integrated with GLUI, but I lost that
version somewhere. I still have the Win32 clipboard code, though
if anyone wants to work on integrating it. I have some X-Win
clipboard code, too, but I never got it working quite right.
3. Remove the dependency on GLUT, making the connection with window
system APIs into a more plug-in/adapter modular design.
So e.g. if you want to use GLUT, you'd link with the GLUI lib and a
GLUI_GLUT lib, and call one extra GLUI_glut_init() function or
something.
Definitly consider submitting a patch if you've made some nice improvements
to GLUI. Hopefully being an LGPL sourceforge project will attract some new
interest to the GLUI project.
Bill Baxter
baxter
at
cs unc edu
=================================================
JOHN KEW'S ADDITIONS (March 2005)
=================================================
Thanks to John Kew of Natural Solutions Inc.,
there are some new widgets. These are demonstrated in example6.cpp.
The new widgets are:
* GLUI_Scrollbar - A scrollbar slider widget
* GLUI_TextBox - A multi-line text widget
* GLUI_List - A static choice list
* GLUI_FileBrowser - A simple filebrowser based on GLUI_List
* GLUI_Tree - Hierarchical tree widget
* GLUI_TreePanel - Manager for the tree widget
And one other change:
* GLUI_Rollout has optional embossed border
=================================================
PAUL'S ORIGINAL GLUI 2.0/2.1 README
=================================================
Welcome to the GLUI User Interface Library, v2.0 beta!
-------------------------------------------------
This distribution contains the full GLUI sources, as well as 5 example
programs. You'll find the full manual under "glui_manual.pdf". The
GLUI web page is at
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~rademach/glui
---------- Windows ----------
The directory 'msvc' contains a Visual C++ workspace entitled
'glui.dsw'. To recompile the library and examples, open this
workspace and run the menu command "Build:Batch Build:Build". The 3
executables will be in the 'bin' directory, and the library in the
'lib' directory.
To create a new Windows executable using GLUI, create a "Win32 Console
Application" in VC++, add the GLUI library (in 'msvc/lib/glui32.lib'),
and add the OpenGL libs:
glui32.lib glut32.lib glu32.lib opengl32.lib (Microsoft OpenGL)
Include the file "glui.h" in any file that uses the GLUI library.
---------- Unix ----------
An SGI/HP makefile is found in the file 'makefile' (certain lines may need
to be commented/uncommented).
To include GLUI in your own apps, add the glui library to your
makefile (before the glut library 'libglut.a'), and include "glui.h"
in your sources.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Please let me know what you think, what you'd like to change or add,
and especially what bugs you encounter. Also, please send me your
e-mail so I can add you to a mailing list for updates.
Good luck, and thanks for trying this out!
Paul Rademacher
rademach
at
cs unc edu
