10 replies to this topic

[aidv]

Hey guys!

I am looking for team mates for a project that I developed years ago but eventually left due to other priorities.

I have now started development of that project again and am using it for an upcoming project which will
hopefully become a commercial project in the near future.

 

You can find the project at http://quicklib.wikidot.com/

 

The project I developed a couple of years ago was called XGEL and is simply put a library for delphi

which was supposed to make it easy to create custom GUI with ease.

 

I failed, and didn't realize that until a month ago when I opened up the project again and noticed that the code was

very bad written.

 

A lot of code, and no commenting, as well as bad code structure.

I started developing XGEL because I wanted to create beautiful GUI for my software.
With the lack of available libraries out there, I thought it would be nice to create something that many
people could make good use of.

Embarcaderos Firemonkey framework came along, but the performance of Firemonkey is soooo poooor.
We all know that by the standards of GUI performance these days in both mobile and desktop applications
we can't have poor GUI quality if we want to appeal to the general mass of people.

We need nice animations, nice transitions, and nice effects in order to make a good impression on customers.

I am currently working on a piece of software that I soon will pitch in front of investors, politicians,
and potential customers as I have networked a lot lately, and have made new friends within the business-area
in and around my city.

They are all very excited about my software, at least by the description I have given them.

I really believe in the idea of having an all-around GUI library and I have made my best efforts creating it on my own.

As time goes by I can clearly see that I could need a team to develop such a library and I was wondering if anybody
here is interested in jumping in and co-working with me.

The library should be free and remain free for ever, and it should be easy to implement in your software.

XGEL is the latest version available on the internet, but I have an even newer version, slightly modified,
with a new name, called Quick GUI Library, or just Quick for short.

It currently contains an Animation Handling framework which easily lets you animate Quick Objects
by simply calling a procedure.

You can animate opacity, position, color etc.

The animation framework doesn’t just work with Quick, it works with any component or class that has
a procedure with the parameters Value and Target (both type single) exposed in the Public clause of the unit.

The idea with Quick (for a start) is to easily create  a GUI for your software by simply adding Quick Objects with single
calls.

The whole GUI will be built around Quick Objects, or TQObjects as they are called right now, and you can easily
make each TQObject rotate, fade, move from one place to another with animation and other cool stuff,
if you want to.


So adding a a TQObject that works like a button and is movable at the same time is fairly easy.
The code needed would be something like this:


 

var MyQObj: TQObject;

procedure TForm1.Button1OnClick(Sender: TObject);
begin
  MyQObj := QView1.ObjectManager.AddPlane(100, 40, clGreen32); //Parameters: Width, Height, initial color
  with MyQObj do
  begin
    Caption := ’Button 1’;
    CaptionColor := clWhite32;
    Movable := true;
    MovableDirection := mdHorizontal;
    Left := 40;
    Top := 40;
    OnClick := OnMyQObjClick;
  end;
end;

procedure TForm1.OnMyQObjClick(Sender: TObject);
begin
  ShowMessage((Sender as TQObject).Name+’ was clicked’);
end;

And that's pretty much all the code needed to create a Button with Quick.

This button will be the size of 40x40, have the color Green and have a caption centered in the middle.

 

As stated before, you can visit the official Quick website for more information. (http://quicklib.wikidot.com/)

 

There's a forum available on the website so feel free to ask questions there.

Regards, Aid

[WingedPanther73]

I guess I'm not clear on what this is doing. You mentioned FireMonkey, but there are a LOT of other third-party GUI tools for Delphi out there. TMS, for example, has tons of various components, some of which may be doing exactly what you're trying to do.

[aidv]

@WingedPanther Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

 

Basically my library is a Non-VCL GUI library, with a more uniform design.

 

I will take your input as a resource and try to write a more complete description on the official website.

 

I have looked in to TMS but I am not completely happy with it either.

 

I have done extensive research on what libraries and tools there are available but I haven't found any except of TMS.

 

What other third-party GUI tools are there except of Quick Lib and TMS?

[WingedPanther73]

http://delphi.wikia....arty_Components

 

There's a LOT of stuff out there, actually. TMS is the 500 pound gorilla in the room, but DevExpress has a really nice suite. When you get to the opensource tools, I've found a number of things on Google code and Sourceforge.

[aidv]

I see, but all of them are VCL components.

 

My library is not VCL dependent.

[WingedPanther73]

How does them NOT being VCL dependent make them necessarily better? Granted, there are things you can probably do when you don't have the restriction of the VCL, but on the other hand, it could make it harder to perform certain tasks as well.

 

For example, if I want to loop through all my buttons, if your buttons aren't based on the VCL TButton, then I have to do more work.

[aidv]

How does it make it better?

 

Well, at the end of the day it's all about what is prefered for the particular project beign developed.

The buttons in Quick are actually bitmaps that react to mouse events, with full transparency, transformation and bitmap and alpha support.

 

They are fully customizable and have fast access to really good features such as movability, movable direction,

push button, position of interest and area of interest behaviours and more.

 

So Quick Objects (TQObject) are multifunctional objects that can act as static objects or dynamic objects, all depening

on what attributes you apply.

 

Looping through TQobjects won't be any different from looping through TButtons.

 

You create an array of TQObjects just the same way you create an array of TButtons and

treat them equally.

 

Example code could look something like this:

var btnA: array of TQObject;

procedure TForm1.CreateAndLoop;
  var i: integer;
begin
  SetLength(btnA, 100);

  for i := 0 to 99 do
  begin
    btnA[i] := QView1.ObjectManager.AddPlane(64,32, clRed32); //TQObjects are mouse reactive by default
    with btnA[i] do
      Caption := 'Button '+inttostr(i);
      CaptionColor := clWhite32;
    end;
  end; 
end;

The component TQView is a the visual component that draws all the graphics on screen.

It contains the ObjectManager which has fast accessed features for creating objects such as planes, bitmaps, buttons, dynamic bitmaps with mipmapping.

All these objects are actuallly TQObject but with differen presets and plugins.

 

Plugins are used for TObject manipulation.

 

For example the dynamic bitmap with mipmapping has a plugin which load specified image files depending on how much the object uses on screen.

 

This is particularly good if you want to create an image viewer or some sort and want to display thumbails.

You specify the path for each thumbnail including the path to the full-size image and the plugin automatically loads the

preferred thumbnail depending on how much space the object is using on screen.

 

So if the object uses 32x32 pixels on screen or less, it loads the 32x32px thumbnail.

If the object uses 64x64 pixels on screen or less AND is larger than 32x32px on the screen the plugin will load the

64x64 pixel thumbnail.

 

This increases display performance as well as memory management.

 

There are very neat features that will be implemented in to Quick, some of which aren't implemented yet as I am still porting

a lot of code from previous projects that I have worked on.

 

But all in all, it has great potential.

 

I believe this could go really far if only some people are willing to work with me as I don't have all the time in the work

to work on it.

[BlackRabbit]

If you are looking for help, here or anywhere, you need to get a little bit better about the "job offering".

 

First, have a 4 lines product description, then a couple of short I need help with . . . head liners. So anybody could know what tasks they could expect to do, and for what project, capish?

[aidv]

Sorry, I don't own a big corporation to have gained that type of experience.

But I guess I have gained it now.

 

Thanks for the input guys.

[BlackRabbit]

Oh, u don't need a big corporation, just to get a better understanding on how to approach a willing coder. Think about how would you answer yourself to different kind of offers.

[aidv]

You have made great points there. Thank you sir!