Re: [9fans] GUI toolkit for Plan 9

[sape@achille.cs.bell-labs.com]

phaet0n@hotmail.com asked:
   I am wondering if anyone is developing,
   or planning, a GUI toolkit for Plan 9?
   If not, does anyone have any good design
   ideas, especially centring around Plan 9
   features? Are there any good papers on
   this topic?

We have an experimental GUI library at the labs.  It's called libcontrol.
Rob Pike did most of the design and I took over its maintenance and
changed it in various ways.

It relies heavily on the thread library.  The controls (our widgets) are
managed by a control thread.  Operations on controls are sent to
this thread via a Channel of char*, e.g.,
	chanprint(controlset->ctl, "controlname operation parameters");
We have basic controls such as buttons, textbuttons, labels, sliders, texts
and editable windows.  In addition we have metacontrols for composition:
radiobuttons, rows of controls, columns of controls, and stacks of controls.
A stack consists of overlayed controls -- only the top one is visible.
Obviously, you can make rows of columns, or columns of rows, etc.
Stacks, columns, and rows help in doing automatic layout, initially, or
upon resize.
Controls report events via a per-control event channel.  These event
channels can be rewired, for instance, to have the events of a slider
be wired into a text or edit control, turning a slider into a scroll bar.

We have a modest number of applications using it now and there has been
a rumor that maybe acme will once upon a time become a libcontrol user.

	Sape