Re: [Qemu-devel] Qemu frontend proposal

[Michael L Torrie <torriem@chem.byu.edu>]

On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 01:13, Jean-Michel POURE wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> Fabrice expressed the need for a Qemu frontend. Before working on anything, I 
> would like to discuss about possible plans and receive some feedback.

As good as wxWidgets and other GUI toolkits are, one size does not fit
all.  If you are trying to reach win32, *nix, and OS X, right now only
QT comes close but there is no free version currently available on win32
(well, there is a GPL port of the X11 version to win32 and it's quite
good, but still under heavy development).  GTK 2 looks good on windows
and unix now, but it's a no show under OS X.  The pros and cons of
wxWindows you have already dealt with.

So, from watching various programs that are trying to implement
universal front-ends for programs, I've found that often the best
solution (especially for programs with simpler UI needs like qemu) is to
have a clean separation between the backend and frontend.

With that in mind, a wxWidgets gui is a great idea, so long as it's easy
and clean for someone (if they desired) to create a new GUI with some
other toolkit and interface cleanly with the qemu backend.  In other
words, if all the backend needs is a SDL window handle and then an API
for communicating with the GUI, that is the best, in my opinion.  The
GUI itself should not be an integral part of the qemu backend. 
Currently there is an API of sorts for use by the front end by way of
standard-in, standard-out.  Plugging into this currently is true to the
unix spirit.

Isn't there a win32 frontend currently, and work in a unix port of it?

Michael

> 
> My proposals are:
> 
> 1) Framework : wxWidgets
> 
> wxWidgets is the new name of the wxWindows framework. The latest release 
> wxWidgets 2.5.1 has good Unicode compliance and offers GTK2 and Windows 
> bindings. The wxMac version is still hardly usable.
> 
> Also, wxWidgets offers a wxPython binding.
> 
> 2) Interface builder : wxGlade
> 
> wxWidgets supports an XML format called XRC, which is called at runtime 
> without the need to hard-code the interface.
> 
> There are several applications for building XRC interface. wxGlade is probably 
> the best and very similar to Glade-2.
> 
> Under Debian, I installed wxPython 2.5.1 from the experimental repository and 
> ran wxGlade from CVS version without real problem.
> 
> 3) Collaboration : group work inside the Qemu project
> 
> I would be in favour of working in team inside the Qemy project. My guess 
> would be to discuss the interface first, commit the XRC to Qemu CVS. Then, we 
> can start coding the underlying logic in C++ or in Python.
> 
> This way, we can share ideas and experience. Any feedback is appreciated. Do 
> not hesitate to answer on the list.
> 
> Cheers,
> Jean-Michel
> 
> 
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-- 
Michael L Torrie <torriem@chem.byu.edu>