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Re: [MANTA] Trolltech Qt Open Source Edition


Chronological Thread 
  • From: "Steven G. Parker" <sparker@cs.utah.edu>
  • To: Solomon Boulos <boulos@cs.utah.edu>
  • Cc: James Bigler <bigler@cs.utah.edu>, manta@sci.utah.edu
  • Subject: Re: [MANTA] Trolltech Qt Open Source Edition
  • Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 12:30:07 -0600
On May 17, 2005, at 12:19 PM, Solomon Boulos wrote:

I agree with keeping UI (not rendering) separate from the rendering code. I'd also agree that it's nice to have the renderer know as little as possible about the UI that might be hooked up to it -- although for my own UI, I chose to have the renderer at least send updates to the UI instead of using a peek system on the UI side to realize that the renderer has completed more work for the simple performance reasons.

Still, however, I don't see how code separation requires or suggests using a scripting language such as python. I agree that the UI and renderer communication should be minimal (but enough to get the job done) and that the UI code should only send commands to the renderer.

Yes, this can be done without python. However, writing user interfaces in C/C++ is tedious at best. Scripting languages provide better support for callbacks than C or C++ (less code to achieve some unit of non-trivial functionality).

I guess I just don't understand what a "scriptable UI" really means. Is there a scripting console that you have when Manta starts and you can create yourself a new widget to help you interact with the renderer? Or am I still missing the underlying idea...

Perhaps scriptable UI is a bad term.  We want:
- a user interface that is written in a scripting language. This is indistinguishable from a C or C++ user interface from the user point of view.
- an optional shell where the user can type in commands to interact with the renderer in case the UI has not been implemented for particular functionality.

These two features are orthogonal but are both enabled by the user interface.

Steve




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