Graphics abstraction layers (was Re: [ROOT] Qt ROOT)

From: Christian Holm Christensen (cholm@hehi03.nbi.dk)
Date: Tue Oct 23 2001 - 16:09:27 MEST


Hi Fons et al, 

On Tue, 23 Oct 2001 15:33:10 +0200
Fons Rademakers <Fons.Rademakers@cern.ch> wrote
concerning "Re: [ROOT] Qt ROOT":
> Except for TWinGui this really would be redundant. It is by now quite
> easy to embed a ROOT canvas in any other X11 based toolkit and TVirtualX
> is so low level that the layers through TQt and TKDE would in the end
> call exactly the some XDrawLine() and the look would stay the same.

For the canvas, I have little doubt it's ok, but what about buttons
and such?  

Suppose I wanted a application with a toolbar, and I'd really like it
to look like the rest of the desktop (using KDE/GNOME/ladida), could I
do that using TGButton and TGHorizontalFrame?  That's really what I'm
talking about.  

I don't  want to use Gnome::ToolBar or what similar, but rather I'd
like to use the ROOT abstraction layer instead, connecting signals to
slots (or is it vice-versa) as I'd normally do in ROOT.  

Also, what about a partitioned canvas, so that I could drag'n'drop
elements from one side of the canvas to the other to for example
create a tree of analysis code?  

And suppose you want to drag a ROOT file from Nautilus onto the ROOT 
browser to open it? Or a script from Konqurer onto the ROOT browser to
run it?  Or a file from the browser onto the dustbin to delete it?
And all this independent of the underlying GUI layer. 

I realise that drawing for example histograms would probably not
change much, but the GUI would.  

Again, I realise it's not at all a small task, since it requires loads
of abstrations of very different schemes (Qt, Gdk, Win32, MacOS,
AtheOS and so on), but the end result should be really good.  

Yours, 

Christian Holm Christensen -------------------------------------------
Address: Sankt Hansgade 23, 1. th.           Phone:  (+45) 35 35 96 91 
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Email:   cholm@nbi.dk                        Web:    www.nbi.dk/~cholm



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