Hello. There wasn't much feedback to our previous anouncement. Anyway, now there is an FPC-DirectFB tarball which can be downloaded from our SourceForge page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wiseslap/ Please have DFB 1.0.1 or higher installed. One sample program is included.

The known major bugs of previous SVN versions have beeen fixed. We're now starting to actually use DFB in our project. Reports (bugs or anything) are thus highly appreciated.

For information on DFB visit: http://www.directfb.org/

Cheers,
Roland

Do you think it would be feasible to use this as a basis for a Lazarus widgetset ? Lazarus without X would be quite cool.

Michael.

I already have it running, using gtk2 :P

Micha

As Micha said in his reply, since Gtk can be used with DFB without X, you can have Lazarus w/o X anyway.

Apart from that, I think it would be absolutely feasible to go without Gtk and use DFB directly. I'm only working with fpc, not Lazarus, so I am not sure what it takes to develop a widgetset for Lazarus. Is there any good starting point in the docs or the sources where I could take a look to give a more precise estimate about the required steps?

Cheers
Roland

Ow, you have nothing to do in about one year (or more)? I can give you idea how to spend this time. Open for example lazarus bug tracker and select gtk2 bug reports. You will have enough job for this time.

Try to think whether lazarus need 10 widgetsets 30% ready or 3 widgetsets 100% ready? I would choose last.

Best regards,
Paul Ishenin.

2009/6/1 Roland Schaefer :

you can have a look at some of the newer interfaces for an example (like fpgui). i think if lazarus has a widgetset that targets the framebuffer it will attract a lot of embedded people, where X is sometimes too heavy (never mind gtk2). an even better idea might be to add a directfb back-end for fpgui, which is custom drawn, too.

henry

2009/6/1 Paul Ishenin :

Try to think whether lazarus need 10 widgetsets 30% ready or 3 widgetsets 100% ready? I would choose last.

depends on the application. if i have an embedded board that can't run your 100% completed widget sets because they're too heavy, it's of no use to me. if there's a directfb interface and it's only 30% ready, i can at least extend it and improve it, while if it doesn't exist, i'll just ditch lazarus and use something else.

henry

Roland Schaefer wrote

As Micha said in his reply, since Gtk can be used with DFB without X, you can have Lazarus w/o X anyway.

I really doubt it:

home: >ldd lazarus | grep libX
libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00007fe7531d8000) libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x00007fe7508df000) libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0x00007fe7506d5000) libXinerama.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXinerama.so.1 (0x00007fe7504d3000) libXi.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXi.so.6 (0x00007fe7502c8000) libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0x00007fe7500bf000) libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1 (0x00007fe74feb5000) libXcomposite.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcomposite.so.1 (0x00007fe74faa6000) libXdamage.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXdamage.so.1 (0x00007fe74f8a4000) libXfixes.so.3 => /usr/lib/libXfixes.so.3 (0x00007fe74f69f000) libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0x00007fe74e4e3000) libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0x00007fe74e2de000)

There is some serious work to be done to make that reality :-)

Michael.

2009/6/1 Michael Van Canneyt :

http://www.directfb.org/wiki/index.php/Projects:GTK_on_DirectFB

henry

GTK, yes. Lazarus: no. There are direct calls to X.

Michael.

2009/6/1 Michael Van Canneyt :

GTK, yes. Lazarus: no. There are direct calls to X.

hmm, do they require the server to run?

henry

2009/6/1 Henry Vermaak :

sometimes too heavy (never mind gtk2).  an even better idea might be to add a directfb back-end for fpgui, which is custom drawn, too.

I would vote for this one as well. Somebody already converted fpGUI to DOS, but that was a while back and they changed unit names etc, so I never bothered to merge the code. So clearly fpGUI is flexible enough to handle such a large-ish change.

Personally, I would love to have a framebuffer backend to fpGUI as well. I often write console based utility apps for Linux. Being able to still do that and have a better looking GUI + mouse support (without requiring X11) will be very nice. :-)

As for LCL+fpGUI widgetset. I've already scheduled time for it later this year, I just need to get our current (company) project out the door. I'm almost there.

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

2009/6/1 Michael Van Canneyt :

As with fpGUI, most of the other dependencies are pulled in due the libX11 library. Remove that, and all (or 99% of those) will disappear.

There is some serious work to be done to make that reality :-)

It's not as bad as it look. :-)

For example, fpGUI-X11 use xlib only and this is what it pulls in:

ldd uidesigner | grep libX
libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb7e56000)
libXft.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXft.so.2 (0xb7e44000)
libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0xb7c22000) libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0xb7bfd000)
libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0xb7bf8000)

GTK2 obviously pulls in the rest that you listed.

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

AFAIK, they are relatively little. The gtk2 interface on Mac OS X could run on X or on native gtk2 (without X) at one time.

Vincent

Ok, I didn't know that. Then what Micha is doing is probably using Lazarus with XDirectFB, which means it's not without X: http://www.directfb.org/index.php?path=Projects%2FXDirectFB.

Roland

Paul Ishenin wrote

Try to think whether lazarus need 10 widgetsets 30% ready or 3 widgetsets 100% ready? I would choose last.

I strongly agree, there are too many half-finished ... it would be nice to ... and therefore useless projects.

Qt can do framebuffer and X11. For embedded devices: http://www.klc.net.nz/linux/?page_id=13
or Nokia 800 (810):
http://qt4.garage.maemo.org/

qt4 WebKit embedded:
http://qt4.garage.maemo.org/screenshots/arora.png

Nokia Tablets are not the only devices where Gtk and Qt are mixed in embedded: http://www.openmoko.com/download.html
http://www.openmoko.com/download-qtopia.html

Lazarus on Frame buffer:
http://users.telenet.be/Jan.Van.hijfte/qtforfpc/qvfb_lazarus.png when will a new widget set project achieve this ?

Preemptive answer: Qt is available under LGPL aswell (same license as Gtk).

regards,

Den Jean

All that seriuos work is to turn off HasX define. gtk2 can be used on windows without any X.

Best regards,
Paul Ishenin.

Hello Roland

Thanks for the committ andd the tar ball.. I've set aside next weekend to explore and begin testing it. Perhpas others in the group are like me and putting the tarball on their 'To-Do' list.

Prince

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 7:23 AM, Roland Schaefer <

Great, this is good to hear :-)

Michael.