[Rock-dev] Rock GUI - location for qt ruby related stuff / plug-in widgets

[Alexander Duda]

Hi all,

recently, I was writing some ruby code to have a nice integration
between Qt and the ruby part of rock.

The hole script consists of two parts. One is completely orocos.rb
depended and overloads the connect_to method for ports. The other part
is basically an extended Qt::UiLoader and has no dependencies to rock. 

The question is, in which package should they go? (If you do not know
what the script is about, please see below.)

I would prefer to put everything into in vizkit/lib/qgui/ 
namespace Orocos::QGui

All c++ based widgets like ImageView or PlotWidget would go into
separate repositories because they are quiet heavy and are shared
libraries.
All ruby based widgets would go into vizkit/lib/qgui/plugins/

Any ideas or comments?

Alex


The aim of the script is:
- using qtruby to access custom c++ widgets without writing bindings
- loading qt designer plug-ins at runtime from ruby 
- loading ui files at runtime from ruby 
- adding user specific methods to each plug-in class to specify how 
  rock data are mapped to qt slots
- providing a way to register default widgets for specific
  rock data
- common create interface for ruby and c++ based widgets 

The work flow for creating a new gui would be:

a) qt designer based
- design your gui with the qt designer 
- call "form = load(ui_file)" from the ruby start script
- connect all widgets with the Orocos::OutputPorts 
- start the event loop

Example for displaying video data:
 camera = Orocos::TaskContext.get 'camera'
 form = loader.load("test.ui")
 camera.frame.connect_to form.imageview
 $qApp.exec

b) script based
- use UiLoader.WidgetName to create rock widgets (c++ and ruby based)
- connect all widgets with the Orocos::OutputPorts 
- start the event loop

Example for displaying video data:
widget = loader.ImageView
camera = Orocos::TaskContext.get 'camera'
camera.frame.connect_to widget
widget.show
$qApp.exec

	

-- 
Dipl.-Ing. Alexander Duda 
Unterwasserrobotik

DFKI Bremen
Robotics Innovation Center
Robert-Hooke-Straße 5
28359 Bremen, Germany

Phone: +49 (0)421 178-456620
Fax:   +49 (0)421 178-454150
E-Mail: alexander.duda at dfki.de

Weitere Informationen: http://www.dfki.de/robotik
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