suggestions sought for a framework for a quick, dirty, really simple GUI prototype

[Gilboa Davara]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 11:50 AM, Oleg Goldshmidt <pub at goldshmidt.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have no - literally zero - experience in creating GUIs of any kind. I
> face the following task now: there is a C++ program that runs on Linux and
> basically receives some packets with some data over the network and does
> some transformations on the data. As a result some data structures are
> created and updated - potentially many times a second, say, a few times a
> second for any *single piece* of data. I need a *prototype* GUI that would
> display and constantly update (parts of) those structures, say strings and
> numbers with colours and labels and stuff. There may be a need for a
> drop-down menu for some configuration - don't know yet. Eventually maybe a
> button or two will be added to invoke some actions.
>
> I figure that the simplest way about it would be to make the GUI run on
> the same Linux machine and write it in C++ for ease of integration. What
> would be the easiest / simplest framework to use? Is it Qt? Ultimate++
> (http://www.ultimatepp.org/ - just one of the things I found in a simple and
> brief search)? Since I have no experience it's difficult for me to judge
> quickly.
>
> What is important here is speed and painless ramp-up to some fairly low
> level. I want to be up and running as fast as possible with as little coding
> as possible. No need for bells and whistles. No need for long term
> maintenance. It is for a throw away demo/prototype - and yes, I am sure it
> (the GUI part) will be thrown away.
>
> Any suggestions / experiences / war stories / whatever?
>
> Thanks in advance,

 (Sorry for the long post, I'm writing a very boring code and feel a bit chatty)

This might not be the suggesting you're looking for, but hear me out.

I write in-kernel C-based DPI software for a living and as such, I
rather dislike C++ and the only GUIs I wrote in the past ~15 years are
bash scripts that used xdialog and zenity.

Long story short (?), we needed a fairly complex GUI to display the
output of our system, and needed to do it within ~3 weeks (the life of
a startup...) - as I was the only one with some free time, the job
landed on my shoulders.
Tried Qt, two hours later the police managed to persuade me to get off
the roof. pass.
(In Qt's defense, I usually start scratching when I see too many
templates in one header file; If you're a OO-happy developer YMMV).
Tried GTK, felt like re-learning Win32 GDI all over ago, 14 days left, pass.
Tried a couple of other options (Tk, etc), but nothing really stuck.

Tick tock, tick tock, I could hear the clock.

Did some reading and saw a suggestion about Python / PyGTK combo (GTK
over Python).
Now, I never wrote a single line of Python in my life, but having
depleted most of the logical options (Raw X11 is not really an
option), I decided to give it a try and... ZING! I liked it. I mean,
really liked it.
Python is midway between C and C++ and uses the more-or-less the logic
and code structure, so I simply dove in. The code itself is very
readable (Yep, Pearl, I'm looking at you!), so coding by examples is
as strait forward as it gets.
Per GUI, the PyGTK API is simple and logical, and the documentation is
fairly good (somewhat less if you decide to use PyGI as I did once I
got going).
Tools are not really needed (I used vim, what else?), though you may
want to give glade a try when you build the initial GUI skeleton.

In ~3 weeks we had a fairly complex multi-threaded GUI with a binary
data conversion, grids, views, tabs, attachments and multimedia
support (courtesy of pygtkwebkit and its gstreamer plugins) and as a
added bonus, the performance is quite good (far better than, err,
Java) and we even managed to add a nice animated splash screen :)

Now, I wish I could take credit for being an excellent GUI programmer
(I could, but I'm not really into getting struck by a lightning).
The credit goes to Python and PyGTK (or actually, PyGI)

In short (.......), unless you have a good reason to use C++ or C for
this GUI, I'd give PyGTK a chance. You won't be disappointed.

- Gilboa "I wish someone could mmap me to the Bahamas" Davara