How hard is it to build a completely new standalone GUI?

I have managed to do the followings since last login;

- installed debian 9 64bit + rt-preempt kernel patch
- compiled/installed Lcnc -uspace, master 2.8, it runs good
- installed glade-gtk2, glade runs with Lcnc plugins, OK
- installed pyqt5-vcp, designer launches with the following error in console, is it OK to continue stuffs under these errors when starting? I can see LCNC widgets but most of icons are missing




I have attached all errors message when launching it in console,
$designer -qt=5

Good job there - success!
if you see the widgets and Designer doesn't shutdown -you are golden.

The missing icon warnings and INI error messages are normal - you can ignore them.
The MDI_history error is new and it's because I've never tested on a clean machine with out running AXIS first apparently.
If you run AXIS and do an MDI command that error should go away. I'll fix it permanently on qtvcp's side soon.

Chris M

Hello Chris,
you are there, ty for your quick attention.
Yes, designer was launched without axis running.
IDE Eric was installed and ran just yesterday but for some reason that I do not know of, it simply refuses to be loaded, so I am clean-installing whole stuff again, I am becoming a master of installation by now.

One thing out of cuorisity :

It looks like python is a cross-platform language and quite standard-stuff, qt designer is run on python 3.5 and I found qtdesigner running on windows too, then can I simply copy those qtvcp_plugin.py into somewhere in windows environment and do the GUI development in windows? I am thinking of copying final result into Lcnc for execution only,

My first time into language stuffs, so I don't have knowledge/experience but glade forced me to think like this because that application is simply too unstable, crashes randomly and shut-down randomly without my permission >.<

linuxcnc doesn't use python 3 - we in fact precompile the python2 libraries because they are not available anywhere.

I don't use windows for almost anything so i don't know if it will work - but I highly doubt it. you couldn't test the screens as HAL won't run on windows...

Chris M

oh you are absolutely correct.... I didn't think of that..
I need HAL to be running to test GUIs..

Tks for the tip! I'll keep on studying and learning python to make what I want to make!!

Kevin

Chris,

What is your advise for more experienced existing glade users, do you think qtvcp is more powerfull and has more option's then glade?
I am curious about your advise.

Is there the same Gremlin or is it more powerfull in the future to display more, i mean can it display a dxf or a ngc in the future?

Anyone farmiliar with ERIC IDE?
It loads python3 and I can't find anything related how to change it to use python2.7
Installed IDLE for the time being

hard to answer definitively, I would say qtvcp is easier to use in most cases as it has widgets such as Status_labels and state_LEDs that cover a lot of normal situations with no coding. There are several options on the action buttons that allow small commands to be added in designer to cover even more small customization.
In Gladevcp/Gscreen there would be needed to be coded in the handler file.
Specifically Gremlin in qtvcp is less powerful as currently the inset DRO doesn't work.
But the base code is the same between gremlin and Qtvcp's plotter, there is an option to add 'user' plot data to qremlin - but it will not be user friendly at the moment -I'm not sure how useful it will be in the future.
I just managed to adapt the code to PyQt - it would be nice if an OpenGL expert rewrote it in using modern GL techniques.

There are still some issues with embedding 3rd party programs in Qtvcp - keyboard forwarding seems flaky.

The biggest reason to use Qt vrs GTK at the moment is the ability to edit the screen.
Getting GLADE to edit GTK2/python2 screens is difficult and unsupported in the newest distributions.
While that is somewhat true with PyQt's Designer - we have had greater success with compiling the code and supplying it and it is much more stable.

GTK's switch from version 2 to 3 was brutal and compounded with the switch from python 2 to 3. It became a maintenance hassle - each little version broke stuff. Hopefully it gets better in the future.

So my gut feeling is if your have already build complicated screens in GladeVCP, you'll be fine for a few more years yet - it may just get harder to get the editor to run on new distributions (though maybe new technology will help with that), but if you are now just starting to invest time into building screens you might want to switch to Qtvcp - the more people that use it the faster it will get better.

Chris M

KevKim wrote:

Anyone farmiliar with ERIC IDE?
It loads python3 and I can't find anything related how to change it to use python2.7
Installed IDLE for the time being

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_(software)#Su...t_for_Python_2_and_3
says any version 5.5.0 on should be able to edit python 2 code.

I don't use a IDE so can't really help you.

Chris M

ty Chris,

Google told me Eric5 is with QT4, is that okay for the job?
Further problem is that I don't see any download link of previous Eric version, so be it... I would have to use something else...