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View Full Version : Building a GUI engine from scratch...

Silicate Wielder
April 17th, 2012, 04:47 PM
Ok, we all know Scratch dosn't have the best Graphics engine when it comes to making certain types of programs, am I right?
Well, I have decided to make a Graphics engine that has two modes. A text only mode, and a graphic mode. the engine will be pretty basic because it requires for image rebuilding by constant color changes and position changing. I will also work on making interactive GUI parts as well. What do you think? Any ideas to make this more efficient?
TheMatrix
April 17th, 2012, 05:30 PM
Why bother making your own GUI library? There are plenty of well-written ones that do the trick already out there. Tk, Gtk, and Xlib to name a few.

I don't know if those will work with scratch(which is really only for beginning programmers -- move to something else once you've got the hang of programming), but you can see.
Silicate Wielder
April 17th, 2012, 06:47 PM
Well, I'm bored and want to try constructing a GUI engine that can function with the Scratch VM interface.
Mirage
April 17th, 2012, 07:02 PM
This is gonna probably turn out cool.

Make sure you post pictures when you finish it, I would REALLY love to see it.

Ta ta for now.
TheMatrix
April 17th, 2012, 08:01 PM
Well, I'm bored and want to try constructing a GUI engine that can function with the Scratch VM interface.
It's harder than you think. Do you know how to do low-level interfacing with the window manager? Will it be portable? There is a difference between the Win32 window manager, X11, and any other ones that exist. The handy part about a pre-existing window manager is that it already has support for the many different window managers available.
Of course, anything is possible if you try hard enough, but in Scratch, well, you're looking at several million "lines" of code, and a lot of time spent. Gtk+ wasn't written in a day, or a few months.

Good luck, though.
Silicate Wielder
April 18th, 2012, 09:49 PM
Hey, I'm bored and want something thats reliable for use with originally list based Programs, If this works, I could then make a more forum like Client than the one I made that uses lists to display the forums.