wxruby users - Jul 2004 - New to wxruby

Sorry if this is a repost for those of you who are also on the wxusers
list. But I thought I might get some more specific feedback here.

I am interested in producing graphical interface elements, like those:
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/img/sc/2.1.0.2/statistics.png
and http://azureus.sourceforge.net/img/sc/2.1.0.2/torrent_general.png

Can anyone point me to what wxruby widgets might work to make clickable
graphs/charts/plots - I don''t mind doing stuff like fading from light
blue to to darker blue as the line moves away from the chart axis - I
just need an object where I can paint various backgrounds and then data
and receive events when someone clicks on a certain pixel within the
graph/chart/plot. The amount of information is a bit overwhelming and I 
am trying to absorb as much as I can from the wiki, ml archives, 
samples, etc.

I''d also be interested in feedback people have as to whether it is
possible to create an interface with the quality comparable to azureus
using wxRuby.

TIA,

Rob

Copies of wxusers msgs below.

-----------------------------
Clarifying msg on wxusers:
Otto Wyss wrote:
>>Obviously, the azureus team has put a ton of work into their GUI but 
>>they are using SWT, and I am wondering if I can get the same quality of
>>results with wxwindows and the wxruby bindings or if SWT is better 
>>suited to this kind of thing because I saw a bunch of questions about
>>graphs/plots in the archive, but I didn''t see alot of answers.
>>
> 
> Are you planning to build a azureus clone? The screen shots look good
> and the azureus project makes a sound impression, therefore IMO a clone
> isn''t a good idea. Either you have some very good reasons or
unlimited
> resources.
> 
> In any case before you start a new project have a look at wxGuide
> ("http://wxguide.sourceforge.net/") so your app gets all the base
> functionality.
> 
> O. Wyss
> 
Although one of my projects is related to "download sharing" (not
using
the BT protocol though), I wasn''t intending to try to create an azureus
clone.

Let me be more specific:

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/img/sc/2.1.0.2/statistics.png

As in the above screen shot and in packages like mrtg/rrd
http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/ strip charts using
line and/or area plotting of data are common. Some of the applications I
have in mind are database queries per time unit, web site errors per
time unit and firewall packet drops per time unit and other application
specific stripcharts - application events per time unit. So that is what
I was wondering, due to the fact that I saw questions about "realtime"
charting/plotting/graphing on the wx-users mailing list, but not alot of
answers. I was unsure if a comparable quality of interface with
stripcharts was possible from wxwindows and the [Ruby] wxwindows binding.

Similarly, I was planning to use one and two dimensional bitmaps to
display things like:

given a database file or raw partition show a colormap of the file from
byte 0 at the left to the last byte at the right with different colors
representing the different tables using that byte - this could be used
to get a quick/easy idea of database fragmentation. Similar to:
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/img/sc/2.1.0.2/torrent_general.png

given output from a firewall or IDS plot the IPv4 address space left to
right from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 and "my" IP addresses listed
vertically then as attacks arrive plot the square at the point (IP where
the attack came from, my attacked IP) with a color representing type or
intensity of attack.

I chose azureus as an example because they have a beautifully done
interface that is information dense with a nice mix of graphic, text and
grouping elements - I''d be happy if my projects were half as nice.

So I guess the more well formed questions would be:

Do wxwidgets exists for doing semi-realtime updated stripcharts and
clickable (meaning if someone clicks (x,y) within the object I would get
an event informing me of what cell they clicked, in order to provide
further info on the area they clicked) 1 and two dimensional colormaps?
Any example apps that people know of?

   -and-

Does anyone know if these widgets are available via the wxRuby binding?

Thanks again,

Rob

-----------------------------
Original msg on wxusers:

I am new to wx and wanted to get some feedback from people who are more
experienced.
I am working on a project where I need to display some history/trend
info and 1  and 2 dimensional bitmap representations of data, the way a
disk defragmenting program might or like these

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/img/sc/2.1.0.2/statistics.png

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/img/sc/2.1.0.2/torrent_general.png

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/img/sc/2.1.0.2/torrent_files.png

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/img/sc/2.1.0.2/torrent_pieces.png

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/screenshots_v2.php all shots

Obviously, the azureus team has put a ton of work into their GUI but
they are using SWT, and I am wondering if I can get the same quality of
results with wxwindows and the wxruby bindings or if SWT is better
suited to this kind of thing because I saw a bunch of questions about
graphs/plots in the archive, but I didn''t see alot of answers.

Any feedback is appreciated, TIA

Rob

Rob wrote:
> I am interested in producing graphical interface elements, like those:
> http://azureus.sourceforge.net/img/sc/2.1.0.2/statistics.png
> and http://azureus.sourceforge.net/img/sc/2.1.0.2/torrent_general.png
Pretty.
> Can anyone point me to what wxruby widgets might work to make clickable
> graphs/charts/plots - I don''t mind doing stuff like fading from
light
> blue to to darker blue as the line moves away from the chart axis - I
> just need an object where I can paint various backgrounds and then data
> and receive events when someone clicks on a certain pixel within the
> graph/chart/plot. 
Ok. You seem to have three requirements:
1. widget that can draw backgrounds and graphs
2. semi-realtime updating
3. respond to clicks within the graph

All of that seems entirely possible with wxRuby. The rest of the azureus 
UI also looks doable.

If it were my project, I would probably create a new widget that 
inherits from Window. It would catch the Paint event, and do all its own 
painting. Most likely, I would set up a Bitmap and a MemoryDC, and do 
all the drawing into the MemoryDC. In on_paint, I would just blit the 
memory dc into the paint dc, causing it to show up on screen.

The updating of the memory dc could happen inside some kind of timer 
tick, or in the idle loop, or perhaps even in a background ruby thread. 
I would try whatever seemed simplest, and if it didn''t work, I would
try
one of the other approaches. You might also want to force a repaint of 
the widget after the memory dc has been updated (Window#refresh).

This widget can also catch evt_left_up to handle mouse events. The mouse 
position will be available inside the event that gets passed to the 
handler. I don''t know off-hand whether the events would be relative to 
the widget, or to some other origin, but they can be translated if 
necessary.

I think you can see some of this in the Space Monkeys game I wrote. I 
create a game board upon which I draw lines and shapes. It updates each 
time a player makes a move. You can download the source code from here:
   http://rubyforge.org/projects/monkeys/

I hope this helps.

Kevin