Difference between revisions of "MSEide+MSEgui"

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=== Drawing ===
 
=== Drawing ===
==== Redraw form from the additional thread ====
+
==== Redraw form the additional thread ====
 
Use a '''tthreadcomp''' (tab '''Gui''') to do the long time procedure. If you need to
 
Use a '''tthreadcomp''' (tab '''Gui''') to do the long time procedure. If you need to
 
access widgets and other gui variables from the additional thread, call
 
access widgets and other gui variables from the additional thread, call
 
'''application.lock''' before and '''aplication.unlock''' after accessing the main
 
'''application.lock''' before and '''aplication.unlock''' after accessing the main
 
event thread elements.
 
event thread elements.
 +
 
==== Draw text ====
 
==== Draw text ====
 
There are two methods to draw texts in MSEgui:
 
There are two methods to draw texts in MSEgui:

Revision as of 15:43, 16 July 2007

Introduction

The MSE IDE is a Cross Platform GUI Development System completely written in Pascal for Pascal programmers. Despite being a single person (Martin Schreiber) effort for the moment, the IDE has already an amazing feature list. More info and downloads are available on the home page MSEide+MSEgui

But what about Lazarus ?

Lazarus is an IDE that aims to provide a high degree of compatibility with VCL code while providing a native look on many platforms. The native look is very important for many developers, but combined with the VCL compatibility necessitates many complex interfaces to the different native widget sets (Gtk,Win32,Carbon,Qt). The continuous evolution of these native widget sets (gtk1->gtk2, win32->?, qt) provokes endless catching up. The MSE GUI does not feature (or does not suffer :-) VCL compatibility. The graphics library provides an interface to win32 and X11. The advantage of the X11 layer is the immediate availability of a large and stable (in time) target platform. The different goals of both projects make that both projects fulfill different needs.

Why this wiki

The design of the MSE GUI is a fresh approach to GUI design patterns. It features many innovative solutions for typical GUI tasks. Being innovative, the MSE GUI library differs substantially from VCL/LCL/CLX. Switching from VCL to MSE may be more challenging than switching from VCL to LCL. These wiki pages aim to ease the first steps with this promising IDE and GUI library.

Installation

See home page.

Quick start

Open Project

Launch the IDE and use Project->Open to open the provide demo msegui/apps/demo/demo.prj. The title of the IDE reflects the opened project. Hit F9 and (if you followed the installation instructions :-), be amazed by the speed of FPC+MSE.

First RAD steps

Close the running project. Use Project->Source to open the project source demo.pas. Ctrl-click on the parameter mainfo in the line

application.createform(tmainfo,mainfo);

to navigate to main.pas. Click on F12 to toggle between unit and form. Not everything will feel that familiar, because of that, these pages are written. Click on the button, this will auto raise the property editor (unusual but usefull). Let us add another button. Make the component palette visible if necessary (View->Toolbar->Component Palette). Select the tbutton on the widget page. Click on the form to create the button. Give it a caption in the usual way. Creating an event handler does not work with the usual double clicking on the onexecute property. Instead, you must select the onexecute property in the property editor, type the name of an event handler and press enter. The MSE RAD will create the handler and position the pointer on the definition. Use ctrl-shift-down arrow (or up) to navigate between implementation and definition. Just add some code like writeln('Hello world'); Hit F9. The writeln will end up in the target console window of MSE (not the console in which you started MSE).

Adding a Main Menu

Add Main Menu

Add a tmainmenu component from the Widget Component tab to your main form. Click on your mainform (mainfo) so that the Object Inspector show the properties of the mainform. Use the arrow next to the mainmenu property of the mainform, to select tmainmenu1 as the mainmenu of mainfo.

Add Menu Items

In the object inspector click on the cross to open the mainmenu treeview branch. Open the menu property of mainmenu. Change the submenu.count of menu to 1 (or higher). Now open the submenu.count property, it will show "Item 0". Open "Item 0" and set the caption to "File". Change the submenu.count property of "Item 0" to 1. Open this last submenu.count property and set the caption of the new "Item 0" to Quit. Hit F9 and your program should have a menu File with the entry Quit in it.

Once there is one submenu, you can add more by right clicking on a "Item X". This will reveal a context sensitive menu with "Insert, Append, Delete".

Once you have more than one submenu, you can use drag and drop to move the "Item X"s. Start the drag mouse move on the "Item X" line.

Tips

MSEide

Larger fonts

Some may find the standard menu font a bit small. The standard font for the main menu of an msegui application is the font defined by the stf_menu stock font. You can change a stock font value with a startup parameter.

--FONTALIAS=<alias>,<fontname>[,<fontheight>[,<fontwidth>[,<options>]]]

So if you start the mseide like this, you can get a larger font:

 mseide --FONTALIAS=stf_menu,sans,16

Shortcuts

Common

  • Ctrl+F4 - Close
  • Ctrl+S - Save
  • Ctrl+E - Select page
  • F11 - Toggle Form/Inspector
  • F12 - Toggle Form/Unit
  • Shift+Ctrl+[0..9] - Bookmark 0..9
  • Ctrl+[0..9] - Go to bookmark 0..9
  • Ctrl+LeftClick - Go to var(class, method, unit) declaration
  • Shift+Ctrl+Up - Go to method declaration
  • Shift+Ctrl+Down - Go to method implementation
  • Shift+Ctrl+Space - Show procedure header

Debug

  • F7 - Step
  • F8 - Next
  • F9 - Continue
  • Shift+F7 - Finish
  • Shift+Ctrl+F8 - Next instruction
  • Shift+Ctrl+F7 - Step instruction
  • F5 - Toggle breakpoint
  • Shift+F5 - Toggle breakpoint enabled/disabled
  • Ctrl+B - Breakpoints on/off
  • Ctrl+W - Watches on/off

Editor

  • Ctrl+Z - Undo
  • Ctrl+X - Cut
  • Ctrl+C - Copy
  • Ctrl+V - Paste
  • Ctrl+F - Find
  • F3 - Search again
  • Ctrl+L - Go to line.
  • Ctrl+I - Indent block
  • Ctrl+U - Unindent

Print from IDE

You need the ghostscript

Recent opened files or projects

The last opened projects are in the dropdown list of 'Project'-'Open'-'Name'. The last opened files are in the dropdown list of 'File'-'Open'-'Name'.

Menu Editing

  • Use submenu.count to add the first submenu entry.
  • Right click on a menu item "Item X" to display a context-sensitive menu that allows to insert,append or delete a submenu entry
  • Use drag and drop on a submenu entry to move the different submenu entries.

Design Tab-Order

Main way in MSEide is set the tab order after all widgets are placed in the form with the popup menu function "Set Tab Order". Select a widget in the container where you wish to set the tab oder, click right, click "Set Tab Order", click row 0, click "Start", click the widget in the container which should get tab order 0, click the widget which should get tab order 1..

An alternative is to drag and drop the rows to the desired position. The first row corresponds to the tab order 0 the second to the 1 and so on.

Creating a new event handler

Select the event you want in the Object Inspector, then type name of the new event handler. IDE create a new procedure(declaration and implementation) in the source code. If you double-click the name of the event handler in the Object Inspector, source editor opens with the cursor at begin of your handler implementation.

MSEgui

Tabbed control

  • Put ttabwidget control on the form. Now you have container (ttabwidget1) for pages.
  • Put as many ttabpage controls on the ttabwidget1 as tabs you want.

Splitter

We have two widgets (widgetLeft, widgetRight) and we need horizontal splitter between them.

  • Add TSplitter to form and resize it as you want.
  • Change the linkleft of tsplitter1 to widgetLeft and linkright to widgetRight. At this step our widgets stick to splitter.
  • Change the spo_hmove to True. That's all.
  • If you want to save a proportion between width of widgetLeft and width of widgetRight when the main form is resized then change the so_hprop to True.
  • If you need the vertical splitter then use other properties linktop, linkbottom, spo_vmove, spo_vprop.

Switch-off auto-scrolling of the form(widget)

Change the container - frame - sbhorz - options - sbo_showauto property of the form to False.

Read/write data in the twidgetgrid

Inserted editwidget.value -> value of the actual row, editwidget[rowindex] or editwidget.gridvalue[rowindex]-> value of the addressed row, editwidget.gridvalues the whole column as a dynamic array.

First events

OnCreate is called before loaded procedures of the components of the form are called, OnLoaded is called after loaded procedures of the components of the form are called. Many components do initializations in loaded procedures, event properties are inactive before procedure loaded of the component is called.

MDI

MDI - application can be created using TDockFormWidget or TDockPanel (as MDI-area) and TDockForm (as ancestor for you MDI-child window). There are examples:

Drawing

Redraw form the additional thread

Use a tthreadcomp (tab Gui) to do the long time procedure. If you need to access widgets and other gui variables from the additional thread, call application.lock before and aplication.unlock after accessing the main event thread elements.

Draw text

There are two methods to draw texts in MSEgui:

  • Simple text positioning by baseline position of start of the first character with tcanvas.drawstring.
  • With the drawtext procedures of msedrawstring.pas.

Widgets canvas

No twidget has a canvas. The canvas used for painting is normally one of the canvas of twindow, it can also be an canvas of a tbitmap or a tprinter or... MSEgui uses one canvas to paint a whole window with all widgets. tcanvas.font is initialized by twidget.getfont, canvas.color by twidget.actualcolor before calling twidget.dopaint, see twidget.paint procedure in msegui.pas.

Theming (Frames & Faces)

Every twidget has a property frame and face. If they are deactivated (<disabled> in object inspector) they are only an nil pointer and need no more resources. Activate them by clicking on the ellipse button in the right object inspector column in the row face respective frame.

The face property defines the background of the client area of the widget.

It is a combination of a fade and a bitmap. Both of them can be semitransparent. The bitmap can be stretched and/or tiled. Example: you want to create a button with a fade as face.

  • place a tbutton on the form.
  • in object inspector activate property face.
  • set face.fade.color.count to 2.
  • click on the + at color.count.
  • in item 0 select cl_gray.
  • in item 1 select cl_ltgray, now you have a left to write fade from gray to light gray.
  • change face.fade.direction to gd_up or gd_down, you get a convex resp. concave fade.

If you want, you can blend an additional structure over the fade:

  • select the wanted pattern image in face.image.
  • activate face.image.alignment al_tiled.
  • adjust face.image.transparency to your needs, $000000 = opaque, $ffffff = fully transparent. The number defines the transparency of the three color channels ($RRGGBB).

To centralise the face look use an tfacecomp (tab Gui) and select the facecomp in template of the face properties.

The frame property defines the look of an additional frame around the component and shows a possible caption at the widget. Example: you want an lowered frame around and a caption right of the button.

  • activate property frame.
  • set frame.levelo to -1.
  • set frame.leveli to 1.
  • enter the caption text in frame.caption.
  • set frame.captionpos to cp_right.

To centralise the frame look use an tframecomp (tab Gui) and select the framecomp in template of the frame properties.

Desktop colors in the MSE application

Default values of the mapped colors stored in the array msegraphics.defaultmapped. For change it's values you can use function msegraphics.setcolormapvalue Win32 and KDE example

Tutorial

Read the beginner's tutorial (in Russian) at: http://freepascal.ru/article//mse/20060108181639/

Also: "MSEide+MSEgui. Draw lesson." (in Russian) http://freepascal.ru/article//mse/20060205191314/

You can also find an English translation here: http://www.geocities.com/yetanothergeek/mseide-tutorial-en/

This page in Russian: http://freepascal.ru/wiki/index.php/MSEide%26MSEgui