Re: evaluating GTK+ for embedded system design
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I am actually planning the GUI for an embedded system driven by a PowerPC. So GTK++ is one of the options I can go with. I like the GIMP tool, so GTK should be a good choise. But I have no feeling concerning resources, CPU load and library size needed to run a GTK app in the embedded world. Maybe someone can give me some rough ideas or experiences. Is GTK a tool for desktop computers only or does is also fit into the embedded world? GTK+ is taylored for the desktop, but that has given me little or no trouble fitting it in to an embedded environment. For example... if you're developing full-out colorfull GUIs on a fixed resolution you might want to work with GtkFixed instead of variable size placement containers. I've found this particularly usefull where the graphist will taylor make the graphic for every single button background by hand (i.e. the graphist doesnt want to hear about scaled graphics nonsence... he wants his button to fit with his background at position x,y). What is the size of all libraries needed to run GTK ? I'm not sure... are you using straight-up libc or uClibc or somthing else ? Do I really need the whole GIMP to run GTK as I red somewhere? (that sounds very large) Umm, no ? ... to run GTK+ you only need GTK+ Do I need a lot of CPU power to run a GTK GUI ? Is there a spezialied version for the embedded world? What is about GTK+ on DirectFB ? I dont know if there's a stable version of DirectFB that works with modern versions of GTK+, if so I'd like to try it out ;-) Does GTK needs the X-Window system? Can I go with Tiny-X? Yes for now, and yes (GTK+ with X backend needs an xlib implementation). although I believe people are working on another backend implementation for OS X (since you are targeting a Mac right ?). We have to handle a lot of large images on the GUI (1280x1024, 24bit). Is there a bottleneck in GTK or X11 to handle these data so I should avoid these tools? When you are working with X, you have to keep the round-trips in mind... and the difference between server and client memory, for example if you want to animate some frames... loading them as GdkPixmaps first will be a performance gain. Is there a visualizing tool to help to design the GUI and the underlying dialogs? There is glade, we find it very powerfull since it allows us to update the look'n'feel of our device simply by updating the graphics files, the glade xml GUI layout and the gtkrc theme file (no code). Is there a way to adapt a special graphics processor (coming with an appropriate API) to an GTK application ? I dont see that in the scope of a GUI toolkit, this belongs in the backend (i.e. the drm kernel modules, the dri etc). Do I need to write something like a driver for that graphics processor to connect to the GTK app? (I red something about GDK) How can I support special features of that graphics processor like alpha blending and text anti aliasing? Are these features already supported by GTK ? AFAIK HW acceleration is not used for alphablending using your typical client-side rendering routines (GdkPixbuf), you'll probably want to throw in a little GtkGLExt OpenGL sugar on top for that. (also take a look at what the Xgl people are doing). (/me is completely clueless when it comes to font rendering in Cairo too). Cheers, -Tristan ___ gtk-list mailing list gtk-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list
Re: evaluating GTK+ for embedded system design
Tristan Van Berkom wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, Oh yeah, I forgot to say that you should search the list (either this list or gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org), since alot was said on this subject not too long ago. Cheers, -Tristan ___ gtk-list mailing list gtk-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list
Re: evaluating GTK+ for embedded system design
Hi, Tristan Van Berkom [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I dont know if there's a stable version of DirectFB that works with modern versions of GTK+, if so I'd like to try it out ;-) The DirectFB port has been merged into the CVS repository of GTK+ and the next stable GTK+ release is likely to have support for DirectFB 0.9.21 or newer. Do I need to write something like a driver for that graphics processor to connect to the GTK app? (I red something about GDK) How can I support special features of that graphics processor like alpha blending and text anti aliasing? Are these features already supported by GTK ? GTK+ already uses the GPU if the backend allows it. You can make even better use of your graphics processor by writing some backend specific code (using for example the DirectFB API) for critical parts. Sven ___ gtk-list mailing list gtk-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list
Re: evaluating GTK+ for embedded system design
On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 11:18 +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I am actually planning the GUI for an embedded system driven by a PowerPC. So GTK++ is one of the options I can go with. I like the GIMP tool, so GTK should be a good choise. But I have no feeling concerning resources, CPU load and library size needed to run a GTK app in the embedded world. Maybe someone can give me some rough ideas or experiences. Is GTK a tool for desktop computers only or does is also fit into the embedded world? The GPE project (http://gpe.handhelds.org/ ) has done a lot of work making GTK fit well into an embedded environment. They are targeting mainly PDAs, but their work will probably adapt well to your needs. They use the Kdrive X server (very tiny) and uLibc usually. A window manager named matchbox is also used to make apps work well on a small PDA screen. Sounds like this doesn't really affect you though, so any light window manager may work for you. What is the size of all libraries needed to run GTK ? Back when I had a Zaurus and was using GPE, the x server itself was quite small, with the X and gtk libraries just being a few megabytes. Do I really need the whole GIMP to run GTK as I red somewhere? (that sounds very large) No GTK is just a toolkit that GIMP is built out of. Do I need a lot of CPU power to run a GTK GUI ? No. Michael Is there a spezialied version for the embedded world? What is about GTK+ on DirectFB ? Does GTK needs the X-Window system? Can I go with Tiny-X? We have to handle a lot of large images on the GUI (1280x1024, 24bit). Is there a bottleneck in GTK or X11 to handle these data so I should avoid these tools? Is there a visualizing tool to help to design the GUI and the underlying dialogs? Is there a way to adapt a special graphics processor (coming with an appropriate API) to an GTK application ? Do I need to write something like a driver for that graphics processor to connect to the GTK app? (I red something about GDK) How can I support special features of that graphics processor like alpha blending and text anti aliasing? Are these features already supported by GTK ? I hope the list of questions is not too long. But any information is helpful for me to find the right GUI toolkit for my project. Thank's in advance Peter ___ gtk-list mailing list gtk-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list ___ gtk-list mailing list gtk-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list
