Low-overhead GUI toolkit for Linux w/o X11?

[Grant Edwards]

I'm looking for GUI toolkits that work with directly with the
Linux frambuffer (no X11). It's an embedded device with
limited resources, and getting X out of the picture would be a
big plus.

The toolkit needs to be free and open-source.

So far, I've found two options that will work without X11:

1) QTopia (nee QT/Embedded). I assume that I can probably get
PyQT to work with the embedded version of QT?

2) PySDL or PyGame. I'm not really sure what the differences
are between those two. The latter seems to be a little
more active. Are there any traditional GUI "widgets"
available for these two?

I've heard good things about PyFLTK, but it appears to depend
on X11 on the Linux platform.

Google found me this thread from a few years ago:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp....0380057?lnk=st

Which mentions the same two choices and confirms that PyQt at
worked at one time with Qt/E (which would lead one to believe
it could be made to work with QTopia).

That thread also mentions Pico-GUI and Nano-X. Has anybody had
any experience using those with Python? Both of those seem to
have stalled. Neither has released anything since 2003.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! .. I
at feel... JUGULAR...
visi.com

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Grant Edwards <gr****@visi.co mwrote:

I'm looking for GUI toolkits that work with directly with the
Linux frambuffer (no X11). It's an embedded device with
limited resources, and getting X out of the picture would be a
big plus.

The toolkit needs to be free and open-source.

So far, I've found two options that will work without X11:

1) QTopia (nee QT/Embedded). I assume that I can probably get
PyQT to work with the embedded version of QT?

2) PySDL or PyGame.

We did a similar project recently. We ended up using pygame and
writing our own GUI. For an embedded device you don't really want a
general purpose GUI which needs a mouse, you want something specific
which knows how many buttons the device has, what resolution the
screen is etc. It is not too difficult to make your own GUI in pygame
to do exactly what you want for your embedded device.

I'm not really sure what the differences are between those two. The
latter seems to be a little more active.

Pygame is the way I've always done SDL stuff in python - never even
heard of PySDL!

--
Nick Craig-Wood <ni**@craig-wood.com-- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick

[Grant Edwards]

On 2007-11-04, Nick Craig-Wood <ni**@craig-wood.comwrote:

> So far, I've found two options that will work without X11:

1) QTopia (nee QT/Embedded). I assume that I can probably get
PyQT to work with the embedded version of QT?

2) PySDL or PyGame.

We did a similar project recently. We ended up using pygame
and writing our own GUI. For an embedded device you don't
really want a general purpose GUI which needs a mouse, you
want something specific which knows how many buttons the
device has, what resolution the screen is etc. It is not too
difficult to make your own GUI in pygame to do exactly what
you want for your embedded device.

Thanks for the pointer. I'm starting to like pygame for this
project. One of the application features needs to support some
simple animated graphics, and pygame's sprite support looks
like it might be a decent fit. I've been looking at the
different libraries listed on the pygame web site, and it looks
like there might be several that could make good starting GUI
points.

>I'm not really sure what the differences are between those
two. The latter seems to be a little more active.

Pygame is the way I've always done SDL stuff in python - never
even heard of PySDL!

PySDL doesn't seem to be nearly as active or high-profile as
pygame.

--
Grant Edwards
gr****@visi.com

[Chris Mellon]

On Nov 3, 2007 6:06 PM, Grant Edwards <gr****@visi.co mwrote:

On 2007-11-03, David Bolen <db******@gmail .comwrote:

Grant Edwards <gr****@visi.co mwrites:

I'm looking for GUI toolkits that work with directly with the
Linux frambuffer (no X11). It's an embedded device with
limited resources, and getting X out of the picture would be a
big plus.

Sounds like a reasonably modern "embedded" system since traditionally
neither X (nor Python) would likely have even been plausible in such
environments.

Yes, it's "modern" enough to run Linux/X11 -- horsepower-wise
it's sort of in the PDA class of devices. wxWidgets has been
tried, but it's pretty sluggish. Hence the search for something
a littler lighter weight. Using Python is probably going to be
a little bit of a stretch, but using open-source libraries and
something like Python for the application langauge seems to be
an important part of the business model.

There's a DFB port of wx, although I'm not sure how much attention
it's received lately. I know it's been actually used for at least one
application. Gtk can also run directly on a framebuffer - that's what
openmoko does, for example.

Depending on the higher level GUI functionality you require

That's still a bit up in the air. Routines to render text
would be nice, as would sprite graphics. I don't think text
entry or much in the way of windowing is required.

Sounds like a full scale widget toolkit is quite a bit heavier than
you need, though.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2007-11-05, Chris Mellon <ar*****@gmail. comwrote:

>Yes, it's "modern" enough to run Linux/X11 -- horsepower-wise
it's sort of in the PDA class of devices. wxWidgets has been
tried, but it's pretty sluggish. Hence the search for
something a little lighter weight. Using Python is probably
going to be a little bit of a stretch, but using open-source
libraries and something like Python for the application
langauge seems to be an important part of the business model.

There's a DFB port of wx,

One where wx draws it's own widgets? I hadn't found that. I'll
have to take a look at that as well.

although I'm not sure how much attention it's received lately.
I know it's been actually used for at least one application.
Gtk can also run directly on a framebuffer - that's what
openmoko does, for example.

Yup, I just found the GtkFB project yesterday. That might be
an option as well. Persumably one could run wxWidgets on top
of that -- I'm not sure if the sluggishness of the wxWidgets
based stuff was due to wx/gtk or X11 (or a combination of
both).

>>Depending on the higher level GUI functionality you require

That's still a bit up in the air. Routines to render text
would be nice, as would sprite graphics. I don't think text
entry or much in the way of windowing is required.

Sounds like a full scale widget toolkit is quite a bit heavier
than you need, though.

Probably. The only UI input device is a set a half-dozen hard
buttons next to the display, so a lot of the mouse/keyboard
dependant features in GUI toolkits won't be of any benefit.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! HUGH BEAUMONT died
at in 1982!!
visi.com

[Damjan]

>PyQt and PySDL are AFAIK not much "less weight".

>
They don't use X11. That's a _lot_ "less weight".

Do you mean the X11 server or the libraries? The kdrive server should be
fairly small (depending on features). I think it builds from the main xorg
source today?? Isn't that what maemo uses.

I don't know about the X11 libraries, but the xcb libraries are pretty much
small too (126kb on i386 here) - there are additional libraries depending
on which features you want: render, shape, screensaver, shm, randr, dri
etc.. Shame the toolkits still don't use it directly.

--
damjan

[Grant Edwards]

On 2007-11-06, Damjan <gd*****@gmail. comwrote:

>>PyQt and PySDL are AFAIK not much "less weight".

They don't use X11. That's a _lot_ "less weight".

Do you mean the X11 server or the libraries?

Both.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! Bo Derek ruined
at my life!
visi.com