Gui Developement

[Jonttu]

I've been on the forum for weeks now (haven't been able to acquire an activation code thx to Yahoo). I only have a couple questions I would really appreciate an answer to.

1. Is the team accepting any GUI concepts for Pandora, or has the base already been decided upon?

2. If any were made, would they have to be made into GTK (whatever theme packages Linux uses, I guess depends on build) in order to be even considered being used in the Pandora?

If you guys already have a GUI designed then I'd really like to see it.

 

[squeakypants]

I don't think they do (I could be wrong), but you should be able to completely replace it if you want. Personally, as I've said before, I'd want a lightweight "apps launcher" with widget support, and if no one else makes it I'll consider doing it myself.

 

[StealthBagel]

It doesn't sound like there's been a GUI selected at all yet, or if so, the team hasn't made any announcements about one. At this point I'm basically expecting X11, add your own window manager and try to use it like a PC, which is far from ideal but somewhat functional. Startup time will probably suffer badly unless all those excellent sleep modes OMAP3s support are easy to activate, negating the need to keep powering the unit off and on.

 

[Eolair]

*I've made a GUI will you use it?

Show us a working version at 800*480 and we will take a look, or better yet post it here and let everyone try it.

That's a nice looking GUI, we are probably going to use an off the shelf one to start with (with some tweaks). I got about 50% done on writing one for the previous SOC but now with the added power it would have to be redone with the additional hardware in mind, it was a similar 'keep it simple' set up though.

It would be nice to get something like Beryl running...

 

[craigix]

I do still plan to port across my previous simple launcher which was written with the older SOC in mind, I guess we will have a simple and advanced mode like the EEE.

We would like to have all the functionality (or better) of the EEE by Christmas, but of course all the games etc. will come first.

 

[timofonic]

I think is better to not waste power resources, maybe if using the PowerVR capabilities it could make it near zero CPU.

Another is the possibility of freeing all hardware resources if the software wants it by some kind of call, so avoid the problems of Windows Vista's Aero and Beryl of making 3D software with less resources.

I just hope the overhead could be too low that direct hardware access can't be needed in 99.99% of the software, Linux could take very few resources if having a correct setup as it could run correctly on embedded systems with *A LOT LESS* (more than 90% less probably) CPU power than Pandora like 8/16bit microcontrollers. Maybe just for software requiring the max of the hardware, but that could probably be very rare exceptions.

 

[Orkie]

It doesn't sound like there's been a GUI selected at all yet, or if so, the team hasn't made any announcements about one. At this point I'm basically expecting X11, add your own window manager and try to use it like a PC, which is far from ideal but somewhat functional. Startup time will probably suffer badly unless all those excellent sleep modes OMAP3s support are easy to activate, negating the need to keep powering the unit off and on.

kdrive takes less than a quarter of a second to load when dynamically linked on the GP2X, and the GP2X has poor SD read speeds.

 

[AnonymousTipster]

What I'm hoping for is a modular Gui, as in we have a base UI which houses the directory browsing and application launching, but the extraneous functions like picture viewing, movie player etc would be in external executables that could be independently updated without having to reinstall a new firmware.
This way, Craigix and co. can design the core GUI, and homebrew developers can work on image/movie/text viewer which slot into the GUI nicely.

I'd also hope that we can put the key parts of the UI and certain oft-used executables onto the flash memory so that it is much faster to run than off SD.

 

[Jonttu]

My concept images:
GUI:

On Handheld:

 

[shadow.8]

My concept images:
GUI:
http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/674/pandoraconceptuy2.png
On Handheld:
http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/191/pandoraconceptaj3.png



not digging the vista feel, but I think you are on the right path, that looks very usable, maybe make use of the extra dead space and I think you've got a very nice GUI

 

[Jonttu]

It's not really finished yet. I was thinking about adding more stuff, but then it would look cramped and bloated. Your right it does have too much of a vista feel (icons mainly). However, the explorer window is very OSX-ish (edited Cairo). Other than that I like it.

 

[Ayla]

I don't agree : just imagine how it'll look on a 4.3" screen... The font will be unviewable.

 

[Julius]

Yeah needs bigger letters

Personally I still think someone should make something based on Compizfusion (e.g. 3D accelerated), but that can wait till after the release.

 

[xhyldazhk]

What about using as default the E17 libraries? They are in plain C, they have very advanced graphics capabilities, lots of builtin raster effects, they are totally themeable and scriptable...

 

[quote]

I do still plan to port across my previous simple launcher which was written with the older SOC in mind, I guess we will have a simple and advanced mode like the EEE.

We would like to have all the functionality (or better) of the EEE by Christmas, but of course all the games etc. will come first.

By this do you mean to have a simple GUI when the pandora comes out, but we'll have to wait 'till Christmas to get 'functionality' e.g web browsing etc. ? h34r: :huh:

 

[CoMiKe]

QUOTE
By this do you mean to have a simple GUI when the pandora comes out, but we'll have to wait 'till Christmas to get 'functionality' e.g web browsing etc. ?

I don't think so. You can download your preferred browser from the Debian repositories.

 

[quote]

Right. What did he mean by functionality then?

 

[Chip]

My concept images:
GUI:

I like the look of it, but you need to scale up the font size / system icons significantly. At least 3x for fonts and 2x for icons in the top bar. I would lose the window entirely and expand it's contents to fill all the space between the system bar on top and the tab bar on the bottom. The current window control icons could move to the blank space on the left side of the top bar.

The main thing to remember is the dot pitch on the Pandora's display is something like 0.12mm. Everything needs to be large enough to be legible without a magnifying glass.

 

[Kramy]

The main thing to remember is the dot pitch on the Pandora's display is something like 0.12mm. Everything needs to be large enough to be legible without a magnifying glass.

:blink:

Okay, so the pixels are well under half the size as they would be on a regular monitor. No need for AA then, I guess?

 

[AnonymousTipster]

Although that GUI looks really nice, how practical would it be?
The actual menu of items you can browse through is limited to 8 folders or items, with a huge area dedicated to a flashy preview window.
As was mentioned in the other GUI thread, having loads of flashy features that aren't really all that useful will be really cool for the first couple of days, but will get annoying/unused after that.
The pandora will allow for up to 64GB of storage, which is thousands of files. You've got to be able to navigate through them as efficiently as possible. I'd recommend dedicating as much screen space to the file browser as possible.
I'd also like to see things scaleable - some people might be able to cope with having smaller icons than other people, and would prefer it to show as many as possible at a time.