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GUI Note For Alpha Testers

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Christopher Ross-Gill edited this page Aug 1, 2016 · 1 revision

These are notes for R3 GUI alpha testers.

Table of Contents

It Works, but...

The GUI works. The primary design achieves most of my goals, although it still has some rough edges.

Keep in mind you are using an alpha.

This means it will have some problems and will crash at times. Some of these problems we know about, others we don't.

Also, if you are using variations of the GUI done by anyone but me, they are experimental prototypes and may have other problems. They may also contain concepts that may or may not be in the final design, since they still have to pass the Carl filter.

So, my advice in general is, not to worry. We will fix everything. We are committed to this being a powerful but easy-to-use GUI.

Important to Know:

Over the years, I've learned that I need to make this clear:

If part of the system does not seem to work right, let us know! Do not assume that it must remain that way.

For example, we still have some problems with resizing various panels. Part of this is from incorrect default settings for styles. Maybe its min-size or max-size is not correct. Other problems may be from bugs. But, if it looks wrong, assume that it is wrong.

Now, if you point to a problem, and we don't think it's a problem, that means either:

  1. We did not document it well enough.
  2. You did not read part that documentation.
  3. We disagree on the design.
The first two are easy to fix. The third may require that we talk about it. It is likely we have different goals. Discussion is required.

Quick Start

Steps:

  1. Login to the AltME world.
  2. The main GUI source code is in the source/ directory.
  3. R3 is view.exe in that same source/ dir.
  4. Drag main.r onto view.exe to test it.
Setup your editor to run view.exe for your script (to save you time).

How to try it

Start with: 

Rebol []

do %load-gui.r

view [
    title "It works!"
    button "Ok" quit
]

You can go from there.

Tests

The source/main.r is the primary test.

The tests/ dir has a number of test. You can run launch.r to easily run them.

We put load-gui.r into other dirs, such as tests/ in order to keep things simple.

To browse built-in GUI styles, run: tests/t-styles.r

Contributions

Right now, we are focused on the R3 GUI, and we can use your help.

For example, people like Henrik have jumped in and offered many good features and added nice artistic elements. We are thankful for that, and want to get more people involved.

Please read Source Code Contributions.

Notes

  1. Various docs are in R3 GUI area in this wiki.
  2. Some styles still need work, including TEXT
  3. Layout and resizing may still have glitches
  4. Remember to download updates as they are posted - because they do not automatically download in AltME.
  5. Henrik has developed additional GUI styles and features. Run the main.r in his dir to see them.
  6. GUI text does not yet handle unicode. So, use ASCII only for now.
  7. GUI bugs can be put in the tracker for that world.
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