New text widget options

Spent some time today looking at what stills need implementing in the gnocl::text widget and, surprisingly, there’s still quite a bit left to do! Most of it has been implementing handlers for some of the less frequently used signals but, text is to get a new -tabs option too!

gnocl::textBuffer
    -onPasteDone
    -onInsertPixBuf

gnocl::text
   -onSetAnchor
   -onSetScrollAdjustments
   -onToggleCursorVisible
   -onToggleOverWrite
   -tabs
   -onDeleteFromCursor
   -onInsertAtCursor
   -onMoveCursor
   -onMoveViewport

There’s still a few more things to implement but I think that this is quite enough for today!

Entry widget revisted

Some really useful feedback from John C. over the weekend drew my attention back to the gnocl::entry widget. I remember adding some extra bindings to it last year in a attempt to put the framework together for input validation and actualisation. One or two minor items were left undo which John picked up on. Thanks. I’ve some development scripts that I was working on at the time which I’ll drag out again. Now that the bindings are sorted, an undo/redo framework could also be implemented for the entry. So much to do, so little time to do it in!

What I did have time for though was to update the gnocl::entry docs page, the gnocl::signalStop command and add a simple tutorial on how to best use the gnocl signal/event bindings.

Then, after working on that, I returned for some coding on the pixBuf filters package. Created a handler to set filterparams using a struct, which, although it has reduced the module size considerably, it now begins to crash! C’est la vie!

Oh, and yes. Last night I thought that I’d build and test the abiwidget stuff. Downloaded it ok, and the dependencies but then the build process came to a halt after an hour! I’ll take another look at it in May.

Freewrap Howto/Tutorials

Spent some time today creating some simple howto-tutorials on creating standalone Tcl/Gnocl applications using freewrap. The process is almost deceptively simple. When I originally wrote Jiumoluo on Tcl/tk on windows I decided to try Starpack, because it was the ‘flavour of the day’, Freewrap, we were told was going out of style. I guess that there’s probably some good reason or another for this, but, Freewrap is so easy to use.

Today's (now yesterday) lot.

Receive feedback regarding a few minor issues in the gnocl and gnocl::gnome package. Resolved these and refreshed the Sourceforge tarballs. After this created a simple, really simple tutorial on creating standalone apps using Freewrap.

End of a tiring day....

It has been a very busy day. Modifying packages and makefiles for uploading and solving an irritating problem with setting commenting rights in OpenOffice. Okay, its not Gnocl stuff but it tool me a good while to sort this problem out.

In terms of the extension packages, these only make calls to a small number of gnocl library calls and, at present, the release version of the link libraries is hard edited into the Makefiles. I’ll come up with a way or rationalising this soon, so that I shalln’t need to do so much makefile maintenance! One last development that I have made, however, is the creation of a simplified installation makefile for each package for inclusion within the distribution tarball rather than the lengthier development makefiles that I have which include so many extras and convenience calls that make life a little easier for me!

GnoclGnome and GnoclGconf -UPDATED

Just uploaded update versions of the remaining ‘base Gnocl packages’ to Sourceforge. So I’ll sit back and wait for the comments to come in! In order to successfully compile these, the Gnocl development headers and link libraries need to be installed. I’m aware that most Tcl/Tk coders are draw to the ease of creating GUI driven applications without dabbling with C and the whole build process, they want easily installed binaries, and that’s the next project admin’ task – provide pre-compiled binaries.

House keeping...

Although I should have spent my time doing other things, I’ve spent most of the day working on tidying up the installation of the Gnocl Canvas and Gnome packages. I can see why these were included with the original distribution, Tk, for instance has an integral canvas widget and so emulating a Gtk+ version of Tk would suggest such an approach. The Gtk+ widget set, however, does not have a native canvas widget. This is purely a Gnome object. The building of these items does rely upon Gnocl functionality however, and so rather than including any future gnocl related item under the gnocl source tree, it makes more sense to me to place build libraries and included in the ‘ standard places’ and allow each new package to be developed independently. I’ve brought the Canvas package up to date and have still only a small amount to finish on the gnome package which I expect to upload later this week.