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GUI redesign?

Open ViralBShah opened this issue 12 years ago • 14 comments

My original thought was to continue with PythonCard as the GUI, but seeing how it is increasingly difficult to install in the standard ways, I am reconsidering the plan.

@tanmaykm What would be a good way to do the GUI? The server option is nice as it allows the use of a browser, and potentially even deploying the server on the cloud. Do you think we can we explore this possibility with a simple use case?

ViralBShah avatar Nov 26 '13 03:11 ViralBShah

Aww, I was just getting comfy with Pythoncard again. :)

On windows I had some issues, then ended up running setup.py in the Pythoncard zip package (I believe after copying it to the site-packages directory). Not sure that's of any help.


Brad McRae, Ph.D. The Nature Conservancy North America Region Tel: 541-223-1170 email: [email protected] http://www.nature.org/ourscience/brad-mcrae.xml

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 7:55 PM, Viral B. Shah [email protected]:

My original thought was to continue with PythonCard as the GUI, but seeing how it is increasingly difficult to install in the standard ways, I am reconsidering the plan.

@tanmaykm https://github.com/tanmaykm What would be a good way to do the GUI? The server option is nice as it allows the use of a browser, and potentially even deploying the server on the cloud. Do you think we can we explore this possibility with a simple use case?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/Circuitscape/Circuitscape/issues/35 .

bmcrae avatar Nov 26 '13 04:11 bmcrae

:) The last I did a comparison, http://pyjs.org/ seemed to be a good option. It is more python than HTML. Similar to Google GWT, the HTML gets generated on the fly. I have not used pyjs, but had used GWT, and am assuming it would be similar.

tanmaykm avatar Nov 26 '13 04:11 tanmaykm

How did you install pythoncard on mavericks? Or did you have it from before?

ViralBShah avatar Nov 26 '13 04:11 ViralBShah

What do you think about just pure html and some server side stuff? That way, we are not dependent on any new tools and keep the whole thing simple for packaging, distribution, maintenance, etc?

ViralBShah avatar Nov 26 '13 04:11 ViralBShah

I had it from Mountain Lion. I think I needed to install wxWidgets 2.9 to get pythoncard installed.

Yes, pure HTML/Javascript and a webserver would be the most flexible option. The only issue in that is cross platform/browser testing.

tanmaykm avatar Nov 26 '13 05:11 tanmaykm

I think if we keep the UI relatively simple, and not do fancy html, it should be ok. Also, I guess pyjs could be fine too - worst case, we can always move to a different toolkit for the client side UI.

ViralBShah avatar Nov 26 '13 05:11 ViralBShah

I'll defer to you guys as to what would be easiest and longest lasting. Wxglade has tab capabilities and generates a python file that doesn't rely on resource files or anything else specific to wxglade (so users don't need wxglade, just wx). It still uses wx & wxwidgets though, for better or worse.

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 9:06 PM, Viral B. Shah [email protected]:

I think if we keep the UI relatively simple, and not do fancy html, it should be ok. Also, I guess pyjs could be fine too - worst case, we can always move to a different toolkit for the client side UI.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/Circuitscape/Circuitscape/issues/35#issuecomment-29267843 .

bmcrae avatar Nov 26 '13 16:11 bmcrae

Apparently you can have tabs in Pythoncard using the notebook widget. Not well documented though.

testnotebook.py has an example:

http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/project/pythoncard/PythonCard/0.8.1/testNotebook.zip

On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 8:20 AM, Brad McRae [email protected] wrote:

I'll defer to you guys as to what would be easiest and longest lasting. Wxglade has tab capabilities and generates a python file that doesn't rely on resource files or anything else specific to wxglade (so users don't need wxglade, just wx). It still uses wx & wxwidgets though, for better or worse.

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 9:06 PM, Viral B. Shah [email protected]:

I think if we keep the UI relatively simple, and not do fancy html, it should be ok. Also, I guess pyjs could be fine too - worst case, we can always move to a different toolkit for the client side UI.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/Circuitscape/Circuitscape/issues/35#issuecomment-29267843 .

bmcrae avatar Nov 26 '13 16:11 bmcrae

@tanmaykm What do you think about wxGlade?

ViralBShah avatar Nov 27 '13 07:11 ViralBShah

I don't have much idea about wxGlade now. I'll take a look at it. It seems similar to pythoncard.

tanmaykm avatar Nov 27 '13 12:11 tanmaykm

I installed wxpython binaries and PythonCard from source. Works fine now. @bmcrae I say go for wxGlade if you feel we need it. My personal preference is to stay away from wx, and move to a browser based frontend, which is a lot more flexible and will pave the way for circuitscape on the cloud.

ViralBShah avatar Nov 28 '13 03:11 ViralBShah

It does sound like the best long term approach would be a browser-based gui. Should we still explore adding a tab to pythoncard for short term?

bmcrae avatar Nov 29 '13 15:11 bmcrae

Yes. I think it's ok to add new stuff to python card gui incrementally, but any new gui efforts should be in the browser direction, whenever we do it.

ViralBShah avatar Nov 30 '13 04:11 ViralBShah

Sounds good. I've made a bit of progress with a tabbed gui in Pythoncard, and will experiment more.

On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 8:17 PM, Viral B. Shah [email protected]:

Yes. I think it's ok to add new stuff to python card gui incrementally, but any new gui efforts should be in the browser direction, whenever we do it.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/Circuitscape/Circuitscape/issues/35#issuecomment-29545483 .

bmcrae avatar Nov 30 '13 14:11 bmcrae