Re: kiss_sdl - Simple universal GUI widget toolkit for SDL

Thanks for your clarification.

On Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 9:38 AM, actsl <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
>
> Ben Henning wrote:
>
> Apologies in advance that I haven't taken a look at the source, but is
> this an immediately rendered GUI system?
>
>
> As i understand this is a question, immediate GUI versus retained GUI such
> as GTK and Qt.
>
> It is not immediate GUI in the sense that it only renders the GUI
> elements, it is not that primitive.
>
> The event and draw functions are called directly from the main loop. The
> rendering and the event processing is not hidden from the user different
> from a retained GUI, and user can add functionality to both. In that sense
> it is immediate GUI. This is good for games in that the GUI is not
> separated from the game, all is done in the same way.
>
> There is always a question of the balance between storing something in the
> widget's structure (or somewhere else), or calculating it in the drawing
> (rendering) function. Calculating it in a drawing function provides more
> flexibility, in that less is calculated when creating the widget, and thus
> more in the widget's structure can be changed dynamically, after creating
> the widget, without any inconsistencies when drawing.
>
> One disadvantage of that is speed, though that may not be the most
> important. The other disadvantage is that it makes the drawing and event
> functions more complex, which has to be avoided when keeping it small and
> simple. But it is not about, this and that is right, it is always a
> question of balance. In kiss_sdl, the absolute preference is that the
> default version has to be simple, so that the beginners can easily start to
> use it. And also that the code is simple, so it is easy to understand and
> thus also easy to change.
>
> The beginners like the simplicity. The advanced users always see it as
> unnecessarily too restrictive. But the advanced users always know how to
> change it, and can do it easily. Like rewriting one widget is not so big
> change, but it may provide exactly what a user may need. Some users have
> suggested several changes already, maybe there should be some advanced
> version of it in addition to the simple version, or some repository of
> different versions.
>
> What concerns simplicity, some beginners may not agree at all, they find
> very complicated and difficult to understand even the default version that
> is said to be simple. 2300 lines of code is not exactly a very simple code,
> even when it is clear and well written, but the matter is that it cannot be
> done more simply, provided that it also has to be rudimentary and general,
> to be useful for most common practical purposes. It takes some effort to
> learn it, and one doesn't even start that effort when one is not absolutely
> sure that this is the right thing to choose, is high quality, works well,
> is well documented, has a good technical support, can be used for most
> purposes one may have, and is also widely used by others who find it to be
> good. The requirements such that when they are all fully required, then
> this makes creating any new toolkit completely impossible. This makes
> keeping it small and simple, an even greater priority.
>
> But providing everything for every possible case, like in the advanced
> GUI-s such as GTK and QT, is not a good idea, in that it makes the GUI much
> too complex. And complexity can never be completely hidden, so it also adds
> complexity to the code and makes the code less easy to understand. And
> worse than that, makes it inflexible, so that trying to do something that
> is not provided, requires dealing with and overcoming all the complexity.
>
> So that all is a question of balance. It is said that a bow maker has to
> have a good sense of proportion, otherwise one cannot make a good bow.
>
> If one knows some immediate GUI-s, one finds that it is not like that or
> another immediate GUI. There are different ways how immediate GUI-s can be
> made, and different ways how immediate GUI can be defined. When defining
> immediate GUI the most generally, in that the event processing and
> rendering is not hidden from the user, then it is an immediate GUI. But by
> some other definitions it may said to be a slightly retained GUI, in a very
> limited way.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> kiss_sdl - Simple universal GUI widget toolkit for SDL2
> https://github.com/actsl/kiss_sdl
>
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>

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