How many of you use WPF
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Shog9 wrote:
I remember implementing a simple GUI for a game using a simple markup language to describe controls, control groups, positioning algorithms, text alignment, etc. The actual controls were implemented from scratch to support this, and the whole thing scaled to whatever screen resolution was in use for the game at the time.
I remember WRITING those. The tools I had back then were actually pretty amazing. It demonstrates both sides to the argument of having a foundation class set. When you settle for one tool that works for everyone you settle for ... well, mediocrity. But there were hundreds of us who reinvented the wheel with anywhere from 10% to as much as 99% overlap between our tools and SDKs. I wrote my own resource language structure, I built my own code-generator for the resource language, I hand tuned my own base libraries, and build low to high level. No one will ever remember the QWIKlib GUI and graphics set, it was retired when I moved to IrisGL, and then that to OpenGL. But even OpenGL didn't have some of the capability my old qwiklib had. Even Windows does not. Even though we all went common interface, we still spend all our learning and relearning a new SDK every so often. We never seem to catch up to the tools we had in the past. Pity. Some of us had some pretty nice stuff, it just didn't match someone else's pretty nice stuff, and then again, someone else's pretty nice stuff. There was a LOT of pretty nice stuff floating around out there.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
El Corazon wrote:
We never seem to catch up to the tools we had in the past. Pity. Some of us had some pretty nice stuff, it just didn't match someone else's pretty nice stuff, and then again, someone else's pretty nice stuff.
Well, that's one reason why i'm less concerned now about writing my own libraries for things i need when what's available doesn't quite match. Sometimes it really is easier to churn out a pile of mostly-disposable code than to learn someone else's idea of how it should be written and then modify it to fit your needs anyway. Not that there aren't good, useful libraries that would take me far too long to re-implement and test... but when it comes to GUIs, they seem very rare. I'm learning now how to use the accessibility APIs on Windows so that i can use custom controls without worrying about breaking things for QA or disabled users.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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I'm thinking of just boycotting the technology. Why should I have to learn something new and complicated just for the sake of being up to date? I don't like WPF and how it makes thinks seem messy and more complicated. I should not have to write XML and hoolaguh boolahuh to make a button on a form. WinForms, GDI/+, OpenGL, and DirectX is all we need! Who is with me on this?
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
I haven't started learning it yet, but I've got the book on my desk. In over 20 years, I've never gone hungry keeping up with microsoft technology.
Please excuse my refusal to participate in the suicide of western civilization
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I think people devote too much attention to sparkle and piz'az of the GUI. The GUI should be functional not some kind of art show.
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
I'm on your side mister, the GUI just needs to enable the user to work efficiently with as little mouse clicks and movements as possible. And it needs to feel natural and logical. Ofcourse it helps if it's not butt ugly too, if you have to stare at it all day it gets kinda tiring if it's bright purple + green.
Wout
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Kevin McFarlane wrote:
I don't use it myself but our application (software for controlling an industrial print machine) uses it.
Why couldn't you design the application without the use of such controls? In the world of programming and application design there are many possibilities to accomplish the goal. I believe a simple bitmap would be a better solution that a 3d rendered control.
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
Bitmap means resolution dependence, and with the every increasing variety of displays out there it makes increasingly more sense to do resolution indepdendent graphics like WPF attempts. I haven't used it that much yet, so I'm still undecided whether I like it or not.
Wout
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CataclysmicQuantum wrote:
I should not have to write XML and hoolaguh boolahuh to make a button on a form. WinForms, GDI/+, OpenGL, and DirectX is all we need!
WinForms? GDI? OpenGL? DirectX?! That's an awful lot of mess and complication there. Gimme a framebuffer and an event queue and i'll give you all the buttons you need. Well, unless you want properly-kerned, nicely-antialiased text on those buttons. Or want them scaled appropriately for the actual resolution of the display. I'll need a bit of extra support for that. Oh, and maybe you'd like to support screen readers and other accessibility tools for disabled users. Yeah, i'll need some extra stuff there too. Oh, you want an image drawn on the button? Loaded from a file at runtime? A vector image, drawn with proper antialiasing, blending, filtering... Yeah, no sense re-inventing the wheel - i guess i could use a bit of support on that front as well. Don't get me wrong - there are problems with WPF, first and foremost that it was released a decade later than it should have been. But there are reasons for a lot of it, and you should learn what those are before talking too much trash. ...And FWIW, you don't actually have to use XAML.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
Yeah, but the designer uses xaml. I actually liked the win forms code generation, where you had easy access to the generated UI element fields. Still learning though, so not very opinionated yet.
Wout
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Yeah, but the designer uses xaml. I actually liked the win forms code generation, where you had easy access to the generated UI element fields. Still learning though, so not very opinionated yet.
Wout
wout de zeeuw wrote:
I actually liked the win forms code generation, where you had easy access to the generated UI element fields.
The problem with that approach was that the rules for designer-generated code and regular code were different. That is, you can do things in code that the designer couldn't handle - this effectively meant that the designer-code had to be segregated and touched only with kid gloves, which pretty much put it into the same category as XAML or resource scripts, except without the clearly-defined boundaries.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
You do if the image on the button must remain proportional to the size of the button, the button size can change, and you want it to look decent. Such as in my application which represents components in a piece of equipment using buttons.
If you are using images then vector graphics wont help you any.
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
You do realize that modern displays require all graphics to be rasterized prior to actually appearing on the screen... right? The advantage of using a vector image as the source and rasterizing only when you know the exact size and resolution that will be required is that you won't distort or lose detail the way you will when scaling a pre-rasterized image.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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Bitmap means resolution dependence, and with the every increasing variety of displays out there it makes increasingly more sense to do resolution indepdendent graphics like WPF attempts. I haven't used it that much yet, so I'm still undecided whether I like it or not.
Wout
Why not a bitmap large enough to scale?
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
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You do realize that modern displays require all graphics to be rasterized prior to actually appearing on the screen... right? The advantage of using a vector image as the source and rasterizing only when you know the exact size and resolution that will be required is that you won't distort or lose detail the way you will when scaling a pre-rasterized image.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
You are over complicating things.
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
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You are over complicating things.
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
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CataclysmicQuantum wrote:
You are over complicating things.
Boy... There are a lot of surprises still in store for you.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
You are making things sound more complicated than they need to be.
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
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WPF runs on XP
Christian Graus Please read this if you don't understand the answer I've given you "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
Thanks, but I am well aware of WPF on XP. It's just not the preferred method of generating user interfaces on XP.
CodeWiz51 -- Life is not a spectator sport. I came to play. Code's Musings | Code's Articles
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Thanks, but I am well aware of WPF on XP. It's just not the preferred method of generating user interfaces on XP.
CodeWiz51 -- Life is not a spectator sport. I came to play. Code's Musings | Code's Articles
No more or less than it is on Vista.
Christian Graus Please read this if you don't understand the answer I've given you "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
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I'm thinking of just boycotting the technology. Why should I have to learn something new and complicated just for the sake of being up to date? I don't like WPF and how it makes thinks seem messy and more complicated. I should not have to write XML and hoolaguh boolahuh to make a button on a form. WinForms, GDI/+, OpenGL, and DirectX is all we need! Who is with me on this?
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
CataclysmicQuantum wrote:
Why should I have to learn something new and complicated just for the sake of being up to date
This is what being a developer is all about. In all seriousness if this isn't what you enjoy then probably time to think of another vocation.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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I'm thinking of just boycotting the technology. Why should I have to learn something new and complicated just for the sake of being up to date? I don't like WPF and how it makes thinks seem messy and more complicated. I should not have to write XML and hoolaguh boolahuh to make a button on a form. WinForms, GDI/+, OpenGL, and DirectX is all we need! Who is with me on this?
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
I haven't, but I looked into it for business reasons and was very disappointed. The sample applications I found looked good, but were slow and used a massive amount of system resources (the simplest operation in one applet caused 40% CPU utilization, another used 10% just sitting there.) Looking more into it, it appears that the moment you depart from the simple, WPF becomes a nightmare. Quite honestly, I don't like WinForms much either, especially how it doesn't separate interface and implementation the way traditional dialog boxes do.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Why not a bitmap large enough to scale?
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
CataclysmicQuantum wrote:
Why not a bitmap large enough to scale?
anisotropism moiré patterns and other aliasing artifacts. Not to mention the memory. How big is big enough to scale? 256x256? 512x512? 1024x1024? 16384x16384?
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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CataclysmicQuantum wrote:
Why not a bitmap large enough to scale?
anisotropism moiré patterns and other aliasing artifacts. Not to mention the memory. How big is big enough to scale? 256x256? 512x512? 1024x1024? 16384x16384?
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
Windows Vista does it with its explorer icons.
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
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No more or less than it is on Vista.
Christian Graus Please read this if you don't understand the answer I've given you "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
Far less than Vista.
CodeWiz51 -- Life is not a spectator sport. I came to play. Code's Musings | Code's Articles
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You are making things sound more complicated than they need to be.
The Digital World. It is an amazing place in which we primitive humans interact. Our flesh made this synthetic machine. You see, we are so smart, we know a lot of stuff. We were grown from cells that came from the universe, which the matter and physics I'm typing in it is amazing how the universe is working. Human life is very amazing. How I experience this sh*t its like wow.
CataclysmicQuantum wrote:
You are making things sound more complicated than they need to be.
No, he is not. Even in OpenGL understanding Rasterization means you understand the results of your operations and hopefully they match your expectations for the code. Otherwise you are playing the sink/swim method of graphics programming. It is NOT that complicated. Everything you do goes through a pipeline process, whether it is GDI or OpenGL is irrelevant, the pipeline process is different depending the graphics foundation you are using, but the process is ultimately the same. There are differences in methodology of the process, for instance GDI is rasterized at every step, where-as OpenGL and Direct3D use deferred rasterization at the end of a frame. One is designed for drawing on a screen and holding it there, the other is designed completely around animation methodologies. Once you realize the process of rasterization, and the need therein, you realize why GDI is slower than DirectX/OpenGL. Rasterizing your process is the foundation of graphics. It isn't like learning how to build cars to learn how to drive one, but it is more like knowing that your car burns gas before you run out somewhere about Thorough, NM and wonder how this happened. Knowing the basics of how something works is very, VERY, good.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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Far less than Vista.
CodeWiz51 -- Life is not a spectator sport. I came to play. Code's Musings | Code's Articles
I don't know what makes you say that, but you're plain wrong. There's nothing stopping you using C to write a Windows app for Vista. If you feel that just because the general UI is flashy, you would think it's better to use WPF, that's your decision, but WPF is just an option, in XP or in Vista.
Christian Graus Please read this if you don't understand the answer I've given you "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )