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

[Meir Michanie]

I wish there was a like button to the email thread.
Two thumps up, even do I love Perl and I think it is r34dabl3.
:)

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 3:28 PM, Gilboa Davara <gilboad at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
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