Erbui GUI Editor

[ohmtech-rdi]

The current way to edit the UI in erbui is far from optimal. This is the feedback we have for the moment and how to address it:

Problems with erbui

• It's hard to layout a GUI without good skills in either Inkscape or Illustrator
• Template don't really help to layout
• It's hard to remember all styles for each control
• Making small adjustements is long (when not using a graphical editor)
• It's impossible to see when a control is colliding with a pin socket
• It's impossible to see when 2 controls are too close and:
  • Either, the underlying footprints collide
  • Or, there is not enough space for fingers between pots

What Users Want

• They want to get started with a new project idea quickly
  • Even if the control placement is not optimal
• They want to iterate with their project idea quickly
  • Even if the control placement is not optimal
• They want a list of styles available for a control
  • Completion in the IDE project text editor was suggested
• They want a check to know if a control is misplaced (too close, collision, etc.)
  • Some sort of DRC check was suggested
• They want to be able to make small position adujstement and see the result in realtime
  • Being able to move the controls from within VCV Rack was suggested

Proposition: a GUI Editor

A GUI editor for erbui appears to be a good solution:

• Placement or repositioning is immediate
• Feedback is immediate
• It's possible to have a list of styles or controls in a drop-down menu or browser
• Have some sort of "X-ray view" which displays control footprints and board pin sockets
  • This could be done everytime a control is moved

Ideally, the editor could be bootstrapped immediately, so an implementation in Python would be a good idea.

Tasks

• [ ] Evaluate different technologies for GUI using Python
  • [ ] PySDL2
  • [ ] pygame
  • [ ] tkinter
• [ ] Implement GUI editor
• [ ] Add erbb gui command

[ohmtech-rdi]

Tkinter seems to be more made for automated flow of standard OS controls, which is at the opposite of what we want:

• We want a canvas to layout ourselves
• We want consistent look across platforms

It seems that a relative analogy could be, with the web world:

• Tkinter = HTML
• PySDL2 = SVG

So Tkinter might be still interesting for some operations, such as dividing the space.

Also Tkinter comes bundled with Python apparently, which is a huge plus.

But most likely we won't evaluate it really.