Hi,

I cant articulate how nauseous I felt when I realized I had to use tcl/tk to write gui externals
but worst than that, it seems I am not the only one, since I cant find any tutorial at all

so far I found

• I had to use sys_vgui to send commands to tk... but what is the difference with sys_gui ?
  -I had to use tkwidget ? or tkwidgets ?

so maybe I thought someone had the courage to write his own gui plugin and tell me how to ?

thanks

[edit: come on, anyone ]

I'd like to know this too. I'm going to subscribe to this post.

One way of doing this can be analyzing sources for existing GUI libraries/externals, but it depends on how well they're documented. In particular, it's important to know how to compile them on different platforms.

V is for variadic (like printf for instance).

void sys_gui(char *s)
{
    sys_vgui("%s", s);
} 

< https://github.com/CICM/CicmWrapper >

@lzr yeah, I started to check some of already implemented stuff
just have to go through tk commands horse-s@#t, then check the event system, it should be allright

too bad canvas is so limited
I mean what is the point of having an object called canvas, when

• anyone can modify it, you cant lock it
• there is no way to draw on it, at least lines or circles
• there is no event system at all

the alternative would be the polylines and templates(why the f..did they call it "data structures" while they are clearly visuals)
but it is as limited as cumbersome, and yet, no event system, no way to lock these lines

@Jojo-Lapin ok monsieur lapin

You can have a look at the CicmWrapper, I made it for the Cream Library and the HOA library. It's a c wrapper for tcl/tk in PD. The API is like the Max's graphical API or Cairo. Nevertheless, if you want something really durable, the best is to use structures in a patch. I think if we just could receive more mouse events and a notification that the subpatch has been resized, most of the GUIs could be done in PD.

And if you want, here is two examples of what you can do with structures: example.zip

@Pierre-Guillot thx, but do you know how to get pd dev libraries and headers ? I am trying to compile an external with cygwin under windows

@phil123456 If you have Pure Date installed, you'll find pd.dll in the "bin" folder of distribution and m_pd.h in the "include" folder. I didn't use cygwin since a long time but I think that's all you need. If you prefer to use MVC, you need to create a lib with the dll and an def file. Here a very useful tutorial and I uploaded everything here MVC lib & def because this can be really boring to do.

The Pure Data GUI is closely related to Tcl/Tk by design. Tcl commands are sent to the Wish interpreter by a socket.

EDIT : gosh, the question disappeared...

@Pierre-Guillot the issue with curve ploting and so on, is that there does not seem to have an event system to trigger some actions when a curve point has been modified

@Pierre-Guillot

but what if you want to add constraints on plot points ? or keep the user to modify some graphical elements ?

besides I been doing gui programming (2d/3d) for years now but I find the pd data-structures extremely hard to understand

and the help file brings more confusion than actual help

not mentioning the ackward rgb color scheme withc is clipped(or mapped) to 0..9 range instead of usual 00..ff

@Jojo-Lapin yep sorry sometimes I find answers and remove the question I just posted

my problem is that I juts want to create some graphical component external but it is quiet complex and there is no tutorial/doc how to achieve this

the pd data-structure on the other hand seams """easier""" but there is no real event system nor plot points constraints and the doc s@#s pretty bad too

@Jojo-Lapin I also thought a zillion times to write my own more modest puredata equivalent... it has been created by a dude who is more a mathematician than an actual professional developper and c language is soo outdated, also many poor choices have been made (yeah for instance, using tcl/tk is an horror, but I guess if you want something multiplatform...maybe with Qt?? or wxWidgets )

If I was gonna rewrite puredata, the first thing I would sack is tcl/tk itself

At first i was convinced that C++/JUCE should be a better choice that C and Tcl/Tk. Now i'm NOT sure anymore.

@Jojo-Lapin last realease was 07/12/2015 and c++ is not slower nor more complicated, it all depends on how you build your program architecture and manage your code
but IMHO it is always best to dig your head out of the sand and rethink everything once in a while

what I really hate about pd code is the naming convention and the lack of comments
ex, how am I supposed to find out what this does with such a name????
void iemgui_new_getnames(t_iemgui *iemgui, int indx, t_atom *argv)

and why not iemGuiNewGetNames or IemGuiNewGetNames

if only the fiddler algo was not that complicated and If I had time I would not mind writing something similar
but so far I'll try CICM lib

@Pierre-Guillot

so I think the linker should be set to -lCicmWrapper but I got conflicts and undefined
can you help me out ?

cc   -rdynamic -shared -L"D:/WORK/DSP/pd-0.46-7/src" -L"D:/WORK/DSP/pd-0.46-7/bin" -o "src/adsr.dll" "src/adsr.o"  -L"D:/WORK\DSP/PD/CicmWrapper-camo-dev/Sources/.libs" -lCicmWrapper  -lc -lpd  
D:/WORK/DSP/pd-0.46-7/bin/pd.lib(pd.dll):(.text+0x0): multiple definition of `error'
/usr/lib/libc.a(t-d000927.o):fake:(.text+0x0): first defined here
D:/WORK\DSP/PD/CicmWrapper-camo-dev/Sources/.libs/libCicmWrapper.a(libCicmWrapper_la-ecommon.o): In function `epd_add_folder':
/cygdrive/d/WORK/DSP/PD/CicmWrapper-camo-dev/Sources/ecommon.c:578: undefined reference to `sys_searchpath'
/cygdrive/d/WORK/DSP/PD/CicmWrapper-camo-dev/Sources/ecommon.c:603: undefined reference to `sys_staticpath'
/cygdrive/d/WORK/DSP/PD/CicmWrapper-camo-dev/Sources/ecommon.c:603: undefined reference to `namelist_append_files'
/cygdrive/d/WORK/DSP/PD/CicmWrapper-camo-dev/Sources/ecommon.c:609: undefined reference to `sys_staticpath'
/cygdrive/d/WORK/DSP/PD/CicmWrapper-camo-dev/Sources/ecommon.c:609: undefined reference to `namelist_append_files'```

@phil123456 : so your opinion is that PureData is a very bad software wrote by bad developpers, that you could do it very well, but you don't, because you don't have time. Welcome!

@Jojo-Lapin ugh , please ... if I really thought so , I would'nt be busy all day trying to figure out wich library I have to add to the compiler line to use CICM just to create a pd external

and yes, anyone could build a puredata software, the dificulty IMHO (H states for humble I think) that the difficulty resides in understanding the math when trying to write some audio algorithms

@Jojo-Lapin btw do you know what library should I add ?

:380: undefined reference to `ebox_invalidate_layer'
:353: undefined reference to `ebox_getsender'
:362: undefined reference to `ebox_invalidate_layer'
:364: undefined reference to `ebox_redraw'

No idea i never used it!

It is probably best to wait for "deus ex machina" from @Pierre-Guillot (and consequently i'll stop to pollute your thread).