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Photon Micro GUI

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Re: Photon Micro GUI

#91

Post by pjmlp »

Razengan wrote: post #82
pjmlp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly did catch on Windows, served as influence to JavaFX and QML design, and the WPF grid layout landed on the Web as the initial CSS Grid proposal.

Are most Windows apps currently designed with WPF or something else? I have always looked to things like the Calculator and Notepad as a signal of confidence; I know there’s little reason to rewrite them, but the proof of the pudding would be if Microsoft updated something as “simple” as those applets to their championed UI framework. I know Visual Studio (and their abandoned Expression Studio) is/was built with WPF,…

Most greenfield enterprise apps are WPF/UWP, some still insist on using Forms though.

No one uses MFC/ATL for greenfield applications on Windows.

When C++ comes into play, it is plugged via DLLs or COM into .NET applications (or even via C++/CX, C++/WinRT or C++/CLI).

As for pure Win32 C style, for greenfield apps, only if are feeling masochist.

Not counting 3rd party alternatives here like Qt, Delphi or C++ Builder.

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#92

Post by rbanffy »

djowel64 wrote: post #86
rbanffy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Such a shame I need to go into my car to run QNX...

Hi I'm Joel, the the author of Photon. It seems I have to change the name. Bummer :-) Anyway, I didn't know. Thanks for pointing it out.

All good names are taken

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#93

Post by p0nce »

djowel64 wrote: post #85
mwcampbell wrote: post #70

Please, please, please don’t use a GUI toolkit like this, that draws its own widgets rather than using platform standard ones, when developing a plugin for a digital audio workstation (e.g. VST or Audio Unit), as this author is apparently doing. Unless someone puts in all the extra effort to implement platform-specific accessibility APIs for said toolkit. Inaccessible DAW plugins are a problem for blind musicians and…

Hi I'm Joel, the the author of Photon. Just wondering, do you know any significant (or perhaps even insignificant) VST or AU plugin that uses standard platform widgets? I wonder how that would look like.

I sell plug-ins and I just don't know _any_ of them. And noone asked me for accessibility, zero people.

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#94

Post by fasterdom »

extra88 wrote: post #76
holy_city wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not non-intuitive. The most acclaimed UIs for audio software are littered with knobs, and they have to be. You're talking about dozens to hundreds of continuous parameters that need to be dialed in by hand in conjunction with the user's ears. It's also common practice to have a hotkey like ctrl to swap between coarse/fine tuning of the parameters, so you can dial it in without changing controls or letting go of…

> It's not non-intuitive. The most acclaimed UIs for audio software are littered with knobs That doesn't make them intuitive, they're merely familiar to people already familiar with such audio software. > hotkey like ctrl to swap between coarse/fine tuning of the parameters Image editors and video editors have keys like that too, they're not related to knobs. > In your first example, you've just made a knob that does…

In the space of that slider you linked to, and audio app would have 5 knobs:

https://soundquest.jp/files/uploads/2018/10/massivex-replica...

On a more meta level, a whole industry decided after 30 years of iterations that knobs that work like invisible sliders are the best controls, and you - who by the looks never had any extensive use of audio software - are claiming that they are all wrong, because of some philosophic argument. You might be true, you might be the rare visionary who sees a better way of doing things where other cannot, but the burden of proof is on you.

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#95

Post by djowel64 »

p0nce wrote: post #93
djowel64 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi I'm Joel, the the author of Photon. Just wondering, do you know any significant (or perhaps even insignificant) VST or AU plugin that uses standard platform widgets? I wonder how that would look like.

I sell plug-ins and I just don't know _any_ of them. And noone asked me for accessibility, zero people.

Same here. And for that matter, all DAWs I know also do not use standard platform widgets. Logic Pro, Reaper, Ableton, Pro Tools, Cubase etc. all use their own custom UI elements.

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#96

Post by Crinus »

mwcampbell wrote: post #70

Please, please, please don’t use a GUI toolkit like this, that draws its own widgets rather than using platform standard ones, when developing a plugin for a digital audio workstation (e.g. VST or Audio Unit), as this author is apparently doing. Unless someone puts in all the extra effort to implement platform-specific accessibility APIs for said toolkit. Inaccessible DAW plugins are a problem for blind musicians and…

> what’s more important, code aesthetics or usability?

My guess is that the answer to this is similar to "what is more important, developer friendliness or minding resource use for users with less capable computers?" that gave rise to Electron.

And i'll also bet that there are way more users that have low end computers than users who rely on OS-supplied usability features.

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#97

Post by djowel64 »

bsder wrote: post #84
mwcampbell wrote: post #70

Please, please, please don’t use a GUI toolkit like this, that draws its own widgets rather than using platform standard ones, when developing a plugin for a digital audio workstation (e.g. VST or Audio Unit), as this author is apparently doing. Unless someone puts in all the extra effort to implement platform-specific accessibility APIs for said toolkit. Inaccessible DAW plugins are a problem for blind musicians and…

> Please, please, please don’t use a GUI toolkit like this, that draws its own widgets rather than using platform standard ones, when developing a plugin for a digital audio workstation (e.g. VST or Audio Unit), as this author is apparently doing. Um, I have normal but aging sight, and I still can't get a DAW that actually scales its widget to something other than 200% (or 150% if I'm reaaaaally lucky). I have no GUI…

FWIW, Photon scales well. One issue is that DAWs may or may not allow scalable UIs. VST2 for example, is not designed to be scalable, but VST3 is. I'm very open to addressing accessibility if anyone wants to do some work on it.

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#98

Post by mwcampbell »

bsder wrote: post #84
mwcampbell wrote: post #70

Please, please, please don’t use a GUI toolkit like this, that draws its own widgets rather than using platform standard ones, when developing a plugin for a digital audio workstation (e.g. VST or Audio Unit), as this author is apparently doing. Unless someone puts in all the extra effort to implement platform-specific accessibility APIs for said toolkit. Inaccessible DAW plugins are a problem for blind musicians and…

> Please, please, please don’t use a GUI toolkit like this, that draws its own widgets rather than using platform standard ones, when developing a plugin for a digital audio workstation (e.g. VST or Audio Unit), as this author is apparently doing. Um, I have normal but aging sight, and I still can't get a DAW that actually scales its widget to something other than 200% (or 150% if I'm reaaaaally lucky). I have no GUI…

> Rather than complaining

First of all, I doubt that writing yet another toolkit of my own would be the solution. How could I know that anyone would adopt it? And as for spending time contributing to an existing toolkit, which toolkit? I read about several per year here on HN. That's why I've been pleading with developers to use platform widgets, or cross-platform toolkits that wrap those widgets (like wxWidgets), wherever I can. But the replies on this thread have convinced me that sometimes, the platform widgets really do leave a lot to be desired. So, I don't know what to do instead.

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#99

Post by mwcampbell »

djowel64 wrote: post #95
p0nce wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sell plug-ins and I just don't know _any_ of them. And noone asked me for accessibility, zero people.

Same here. And for that matter, all DAWs I know also do not use standard platform widgets. Logic Pro, Reaper, Ableton, Pro Tools, Cubase etc. all use their own custom UI elements.

You're right about the DAWs, though last time I checked, REAPER on Windows uses some standard Win32 controls in its dialogs, which helps. Also, REAPER has rich enough plugin support that a couple of plugins have been written to hack screen reader support into REAPER. In particular, check out the open-source OSARA [1] project. This work-around isn't feasible for making plugins accessible, since those plugins are generally not as hackable as REAPER itself. I don't know about other DAWs.

[1]: https://osara.reaperaccessibility.com/

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