I'd like to use a more sophisticated graphics or GUI widget library in my Hammerspoon config file, in order to get user input and do more advanced drawing on the screen than Hammerspoon allows (as far as I can tell) by default. I'm new to Lua and Hammerspoon, and so far I've been unable to figure out how to get this working. (Simple drawing on-screen is not a problem, so examples of geometric shapes are not helpful. I can do that already with no difficulty.)
I initially thought one of the Lua libraries designed for building games would have more than I could possibly need, and looked into love2d, but it did not appear to be possible to use with Hammerspoon in any straightforward manner.
To give two concrete examples of things I'd like to do:
I'd like to display a dialog box in which the user can enter two values, to specify how many rows and how many columns they want in their screen grid. A native Cocoa dialog would be better, but something graphically drawn on screen with Lua would be fine, as long as the details of the image are abstracted away for me, and I can just define the text and fields and buttons in the dialog.
I'd like to draw a dotted-line rectangle with curved corners and a shadow around specified grid segments as a preview of where a window would be moved if the user completed a certain command.
There's a lot more, but anything that allows me to do those things should allow me to do anything else I want.
We don't yet have a good answer to generating dialog boxes, although it is possible to do it with AppleScript, which you can call from Hammerspoon with hs.osascript.
As for drawing things like dotted-line rectangles, we can't currently do that, but if you'd like to file an issue on our GitHub project, it's something we can look at for a future release :)
Related
I am trying to build a gantt control with Konva (does it make sense to use Konva for this)? I have tried to sketch the control below:
I was thinking of breaking down the Konvas stage as follows:
One stage with 4 layers: activity names, timeline, activity views, and scrollbar view.
The scrollbar layer would contain a "custom control" mimicking a standard scrollbar control.
At this stage I have a couple if questions:
What would be the best approach for synchronizing the different layers from an event handling perspective? For example if the user click's on the scrollbar's down arrow shape, I would need to "scroll" all layers one unit down.
How does the Konva coordinate system work? Is the drawing of shapes done relative to the containing layer?
What's the difference between a layer and a group? Does it make more sense to use a group instead of layers?
I realize my questions are very broad in nature, but at this point I need to get the design right.
I am responding here rather than as a comment because I have more to say than a comment allows.
I have made Gantts with both HTML elements, and another canvas lib, and Konva. I used Divs with jquery first and it was viable but I felt it got quite complicated and it ran out of steam in the area of zooming the view. You can't hide from the complexity of course. Switching to HTML5 canvas I realised that a lib like Konva would accelerate production. And zooming in canvas is simple.
As per #lavrton's comment, the text is primitive on HTML5 canvas when compared to GDI, or other, more mature tech. My answer for the labels on tasks was to use off-screen text drawing then converting to images which works very well. For popup editing, I revert to HTML divs etc. I did not use animations in the Gantt but I have elsewhere and canvas should be fine - there are plenty of bouncy-ball / particle tests around to confirm that.
As a coding design suggestion, the data model and functionality of the Gantt is consistent whatever tech you use to draw it with. I recommend you consider proceeding with a layered approach where your interaction with drawing functions is wrapped as class methods in a drawing class so that you can switch out the drawing tech itself should you feel the need. You could insulate yourself from the choice of tech and/or library that way.
Turning to aspects of your question:
layers are a useful concept. Physically each layer is an HTML5 canvas element. So multiple layers in one diagram are really multiple canvases over the same stage. The benefit here is in redrawing specific layers instead of the entire canvas where there are performance savings. But mostly you can ignore the physical and just get on and use the concept which works well.
groups: a group is a collection of shapes on a layer. If you have to draw things made of many shapes, grouping them is very useful because you can move the group as a whole, hide it, delete it, etc. You might, for example, consider making each taskbar, composed of at least a rectangle and text, as being a group. One consideration for groups is that the location and size of the group is that of the bounding rectangle that encloses the shapes within it. This can cause some confusion until you work out an approach. You will find yourself using layers and groups, but mostly groups for drawing controls.
Zooming / scaling: this is easy with a canvas. Less easy is the math for how to change the offset to keep the same view as you zoom, but again it is achievable.
Synchronised scrolling layers is not going to take any time to develop - just set the layer y-position for each layer.
Drawing the grid of rows for activity and columns for days/weeks/months/etc should not be underestimated as a task, but as you develop it you will learn the fundamentals of working with Konva.
Final point - the docs and examples for Konva could be a bit better, but the community support here and at https://konvajs.github.io/docs/ is good, and the Konva source code is also at that site so you can delve right in to understand what is happening, though you do not need to do that at all if it is not your thing.
I've been trying different tiling WM's to see which one best fits my needs. Every time I try a new one, it looks good but I find other things that don't quite work the way I like. My requirements have evolved as I go. Initially, I didn't want to get into Awesome because having to learn Lua is not on my wish list but maybe I should give it a try IF it can do what I want better than the other tiling WM's out there.
I'm going to as specific as I can about what I want. I am running a 3440x1440 monitor. I want to use as much vertical space as possible (meaning, a full width, persistent but mostly empty status bar is not an option, but I do like the notification area and a date/time).
I understand it may not do everything exactly the way I want, which is oke. If it does more or less most of what I want I can weigh my options between Awesome and other tiling WM's (actually, only i3 which is what I'm using now but I'm open to better suggestions). I would very much appreciate it if people don't just say no to something it can't do, but say "no, but it can do ...". In other words, feel free to suggest alternatives that might be helpful as well.
Divide the screen in 3 columns, initially 30/45/25, with the right column split horizontally; Fully adjustable and resizable as needed during my work session;
Persistent layout; when closing the last application in a tile, I don't want that tile to disappear and the remaining tiles to resize. Just show an empty space and leave all tiles as they are.
tabbed tiles, so I see which applications are running in a tile (similar to i3).
Resizable tiles with the keyboard into 1 direction; When making the middle column/tile wider, I want that into a specific direction into another tile and leave the other side alone.
Certain applications I want to always launch into a specific tile. For instance, terminals always go into the right-most column top/bottom, browser/spotify always into the middle, atom/IDE always into the left. Some applications should always be floating. Obviously I want to be able to send them to a different tile after launch.
I don't want a 100% width status bar. It will be mostly empty which is a waste of screen estate. Preferably, I'd like a statusbar part of a tile, for example in the right-most tile, resizing with it. Otherwise I'd like it to be fixed to 30% and allow tiles which are not beneath it to use the full height of the screen. My reason for a statusbar is mute; I actually only want a notification area and a date time permanently visible. I don't need a "start menu", dmenu or similar is perfect, which I believe it has integrated.
Many thanks in advance!
The general answer is "Awesome configuration is code and it can do whatever you want". But there is a catch. Can Awesome be configured like you describe? Yes, totally. There is at least 2 distributions coming close enough (mine[1] and worron[2]) (at least for the tiling workflow, not the look).
The "catch" is that the workflow you describe isn't really the "Awesome way". Awesome is usually used as an automatic tiler. You have layouts that describe a workflow (code, web, internet) and manage the clients according to their programming. Manual tile management is rarely necessary once you have proper layouts. That doesn't mean you can't, I did, but it might be worth thinking outside the box and see if you can automate your workflow a bit further.
Also, the default layout system isn't very modern and makes it hard to implement the features you requested. My layout system (see link below) can be used as a module or as a branch and supports all features described above. Awesome is extremely configurable and it's components can be replaced by modules.
https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome/pull/644
The layout "serialization" documentation is here:
https://elv13.github.io/libraries/awful.layout.html#awful.layout.suit.dynamic.manual
It is similar to i3 but has more layouts and containers. As for the "leaving blank space" part, it is configured using the fill_strategy:
https://awesomewm.org/doc/api/classes/wibox.layout.ratio.html#wibox.layout.ratio.inner_fill_strategy
As a word of conclusion, I would note that what you ask is "work exactly like i3". If you want such thing, well, use i3. Awesome is a window manager framework. Its goal and purpose is to create a customized desktop shell / WM. If it's what you want, then go ahead and learn it, nothing else can come close to the possibility and the level of control you can get out of it. However it takes time and effort to get to the point where you have "your own perfect desktop". Our users perfect desktops:
https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome/issues/1395
[1] https://gfycat.com/SmallTerribleAdamsstaghornedbeetle
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yNALqST1-Y
The WM your are looking for is herbstluftwm (hlwm). Its a manual tiling window manager. The tiles which you are talking about are called frames in hlwm. Each frame can contain multiple windows. A frame can also be empty. Only if you kill a frame the other frames will automatically resize. You can add new frames vertically and horizontally and resize them. Each frame can also have a different layout to organize the windows inside. The layout you are looking for is max. This will stack the windows inside a frame on each other. It doesn't show you tabs like i3 however. hlwm allows you to create rules to open certain applications always in certain frames and workspaces. hlwm doesn't have a statusbar buildin. I personally like to use tint2. It can be used as a replacement for your requirement to see running applications as tabs.
I have a requirement in my product to create an widget to have workflow kind of process.
If you see attached image , I am looking for similar kind of chart.
As we have already fusion charts with us, is it possible to have similar stuff?
Since you already have FusionCharts, I would recommend using the Drag Node Chart. The chart is exactly of the type you need and the dragging functionality can be easily turned off!
http://www.fusioncharts.com/charts/drag-node-charts/
In fact, one of the examples look very close to the image in your question and as far as I can tell, the chart can be customised to look almost same -
http://www.fusioncharts.com/charts/drag-node-charts/
Only downside that I can think of is that you will have to manually calculate the position of your workflow nodes (the connectors will connect automatically.) However, the positions can be easily computed by writing simple function on the beforeDataUpdate event fired by the chart.
PS: Using the annotations feature, you can dynamically position texts labels, images, and other such items arounds your process diagram.
I would like to achieve a cool particle effect like in here.
The bubble should be similar to an explosion starting from the centre and expanding. I'd like to add an animated wave coming out from the left and right side of the bubble and looking like this. I guess I could use to two distinct animation and put together as I assume this has never been done in a Cocos2d game.
Also, I would like to avoid using non-Cocos2d tools as particle designer. In chapter 1 of the Cocos2d cookbook I found some cool particle examples and the code doesn't seem too complex. Instead, using third party tools I need to import their classes and use their file format to create particles and I have to pay. Even more there doesn't seem to be many particle effect files shared (at least not the ones I want).
Thanks a lot.
EDIT: I added a comment with a theory on how the first of the two animation could work.
Your best chance is with Particle Designer. You can modify the emitters in the library and visualize your changes. It's the easiest way to achieve a great effect. Once you find the combination of values that you like , you can simply create an emitter from code and set all those properties yourself. You don't have to pay or use any class (which you actually don't have to , it's already built in cocos2D) . So just download the free version of Particle Designer and then set the values from code. It's the same thing , it only takes a bit more work to do.
If my designer gives me a 960x640px image of what the screen should look like, as well as all of the individual elements as images or text, is there a way to lay out the images and text on the iPhone/iPad screen without doing it manually through code? The way I'm doing it now is a series of trial and error, trying to guess the position of each element.
By the way, the types of layouts I'm trying to do are simple static layouts for stuff like Menus and High Scores lists, etc.
You should try one of the editing tools: LevelHelper, CocoShop and CocosBuilder. The problem will be the output format, make sure that not only the editing part works to your specification but that you can actually use just the snippet of code you need to plug it into your code.
Do you have an image-editing software like Photoshop or GIMP? How about opening the 960x640px image with any such software, then hovering your mouse over the center of each element for its coordinates, and then finally pumping these values into your code?
In my opinion, this is at least better and way faster than trial and error:)
If you want to measure position of graphic elements. You can try a commercial called xscope. The trail version can be downloaded form their official website. It is the best tool I ever seen to measure distance, color(like, it can copy color measured directly to [UIColor ...] format), etc. If you want something freeware, I would like to recommend markman, which is a Chinese software, it's built on adobe air. All elements/button are graphic, so you don't need to read chinese to use it..
You can try to use some open source editor and write your exporter. For example I am using blender as a level editor for the game I am working on. It has a nice python API that can be used to export all the information you need.