[erlang-questions] GUI development with Erlang

[Alan Gingras]

Arif,

Wow! Thanks for this excellent tutorial.  All the searching I've done and I
have found nothing like this.  I've worked through Doug Edmunds site and the
few others I've found but this booklet is definitely a great resource.  I
will work through this and see if it changes my mind about doing my project
with wxErlang.  I have what I want to accomplish in mind and see some
difficulties ahead (mostly with the desire to create a chart).  I see that
wxErlang / wxWidgets does not have a "native" chart control.  I know that
the Erlang observer utility has some load charts but it looks like they draw
the chart themselves so I might be able to "steal" that.

Thanks again.

Sincerely yours,
Alan

-----Original Message-----
From: arif@REDACTED [mailto:arif@REDACTED] 
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2017 15:07
To: Alan Gingras <alangingras@REDACTED>
Cc: erlang-questions@REDACTED
Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] GUI development with Erlang

Thanks Alan for your explanation. It makes sense. I sort of forgot about the
initial difficulties. So I have put together a small description for you in
case you still want to give it a try.
https://arifishaq.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/wxerlang-getting-started.pdf
Good luck!
Arif

On 2017-12-09 13:39, Alan Gingras wrote:
> Arif,
> 
> Perhaps my difficulty lies in the documentation for wxErlang and 
> WxWidgets combined with my experience with Windows.Forms, TCL/Tk and 
> others.  I have been able to find excellent documentation and examples 
> easily for pretty much everything I have wanted or needed to do.  Not 
> diminishing WxWidgets, but getting the layouts correct and working as 
> desired has been faster and easier for me in every other GUI package 
> I've used.  The others (for the most part) seemed more intuitive to me 
> than the windows/panels etc. of wxWidgets.  And I have worked through 
> what little I can find on the wxErlang, i.e.
> http://www.idiom.com/~turner/wxtut/wxwidgets.html
> http://wxerlang.dougedmunds.com/
> 
> In the end, I think better documentation - not written for someone who 
> already knows how to use either WxWidgets or wxErlang - would be a key 
> improvement.
> 
> Regards,
> Alan
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: erlang-questions-bounces@REDACTED
> [mailto:erlang-questions-bounces@REDACTED] On Behalf Of 
> arif@REDACTED
> Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2017 08:04
> To: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] GUI development with Erlang
> 
> Hi,
> I have been using wxErlang on some projects and I don't find it too 
> hard. I make the GUI in separate processes and communicate with the 
> application using regular erlang message passing.
> Using the wx_object, it is practically a breeze. It is like 
> programming a gen_server. I even run the GUI processes supervised, to 
> allow me to "let it crash".
> Also, you can use wxFormBuilder to do the layout and use the generated 
> PHP or LUA code to figure out what you need to do in wxErlang. I 
> suppose you could even write a parser to generate your erlang code from
those.
> So I am curious. What is that you find so hard about it? And what 
> makes it easier with C# or the like?
> Thanks
> Arif
> 
> 
> Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2017 15:08:39 -0500
> From: "Alan Gingras" <alangingras@REDACTED>
> To: "'Alex S.'" <alex0player@REDACTED>
> Cc: 'Erlang' <erlang-questions@REDACTED>
> Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] GUI development with Erlang
> Message-ID: <002901d36ece$026702a0$073507e0$@comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> Thanks Alex.  I had thought of that but was trying to make this a pure 
> Erlang application.  This is most likely the approach I will end up 
> taking unless I decide to pursue wxErlang, but that is probably a little
unlikely.
> 
> 
> From: Alex S. [mailto:alex0player@REDACTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2017 03:08
> To: Alan Gingras <alangingras@REDACTED>
> Cc: Erlang <erlang-questions@REDACTED>
> Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] GUI development with Erlang
> 
> For what it's worth, you can always implement your view and controller 
> in something like C#/F#, and your model in Erlang, and hook them up via
TCP.
> Alternatively, there was an Erlang-toF# compiler floating around I
believe.
> 
> 
> 2017-12-03 22:43 GMT+03:00 Alan Gingras <alangingras@REDACTED 
> <mailto:alangingras@REDACTED> >:
> 
> Has anyone tried using Windows Forms (.net) with Erlang?  This would 
> be in a similar fashion to way Python can use Windows Forms.  On Linux 
> I believe this would be Mono
(http://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/winforms/).
> Basically I think I?m looking for something similar to Python?s 
> ?import? and C#?s ?using?
> features.  If no one has anything, any hints on how a feature like 
> this might be implemented.
> 
> Basically, I have been working on implementing genetic programming in 
> Erlang and would like to provide a GUI front end.  The WxWidgets front 
> end that comes with Erlang is difficult at best.  I?ve used several 
> different GUI kits on *nix and Windows platforms but WxWidgets seems 
> the most difficult for me.  So I?m trying to see what else is 
> available.  I followed Joe Armstrong?s quest earlier this year and 
> didn?t see where he came up with anything.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Alan
> 
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