wxIFM is back. Sort of.

Do you like to promote your wxWidgets based application or component!? Post it here and let's see what the critics have to say. Also, if you found that ONE wx component the world needs to know about, put it here for future reference.
Post Reply
SnakeChomp
Filthy Rich wx Solver
Filthy Rich wx Solver
Posts: 235
Joined: Sun Oct 10, 2004 2:53 am

wxIFM is back. Sort of.

Post by SnakeChomp »

Hi folks.

Recently, somebody found IFM 2.0 on sourceforge.net and contacted me about doing some work for it. They put a bunch of work into it and helped move the project forward by adding tab functionality (and started on a few other things). Their efforts brought me back to the project, and now I'd like to share what has been done with the general public. Who knows, maybe I'll even recruit some more people who would be interested in helping move the project even further along.

In case you have no idea what wxIFM is, it is a project I was working on about 3 years ago. It is a docking library, just like wxAUI is today, and just like wxFL (wxFrameLayout) was in the bad old days. There are still some of the old threads for it kicking around. Search for wxIFM if you're bored to learn more about it's history.

Today, wxIFM 2.0 is close to the point where I would consider doing a real release of it for general consumption. I currently consider the project to be in an alpha state, as it is still lacking one important feature blocking making a release (that happens to be resizable docked windows). Don't be scared by the alpha designation though. It does not imply that its a buggy pile of you-know-what, it only means that it is not yet feature complete. Generally, alpha releases have missing features and probably have some bugs, where as betas are feature complete but probably still have some bugs.

The features currently provided by wxIFM 2.0 are
  • Dynamically saving and loading layouts. This lets you provide multiple interfaces, as seen in elicpse's different UI layouts when debugging vs coding. You can also save the current layout (which includes any customizations made by the user) to load later. There is no limit on the number of layouts you have (or save).
  • VS2005 style docking.
  • Tabbed docking. You can dock things as tabs, then dock them somewhere else by dragging the tab.
The features missing which I would like to implement are:
  • Reordering tabs. Currently, to change the order of tabs, you must dock the tabs back into the container (which places them at the end of the tab list). I want to be able to reorder the tabs by dragging them in addition to being able to dock the tabs somewhere else.
  • Resizing docked windows.
  • Serializing layouts to disk and from disk so you can remember a user's customizations for future instances of the program.
I will be tinkering with this project every so often, but I have no target date for finishing this project. If after reading this you would like more information about the project or are interested in contributing, please visit http://ifm.sourceforge.net or https://sourceforge.net/projects/ifm.

Note that there is no download available for IFM 2.0 at this time. You'll have to grab the source from SVN. The documentation is currently online and can be found via the pages linked earlier.

~SnakeChomp

p.s. I almost forgot. IFM 2.0 is currently developed against wxWidgets 2.8.x and may not work against an older version. Furthermore, I haven't tried it on GTK recently, so it may not there either.
asp
Knows some wx things
Knows some wx things
Posts: 32
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2004 4:35 pm

Post by asp »

I'm glad to hear that!

Could you provide a precompiled binary to see it in action?
orbitcowboy
I live to help wx-kind
I live to help wx-kind
Posts: 178
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 9:01 am

Post by orbitcowboy »

asp wrote:I'm glad to hear that!

Could you provide a precompiled binary to see it in action?
I am interested too. Maybe i can test it in wxGTK.

Best regards

Orbitcowboy
OS: Ubuntu 9.04 (32/64-Bit), Debian Lenny (32-Bit)
Compiler: gcc/g++-4.3.3 , gcc/g++-4.4.0
wxWidgets: 2.8.10,2.9.0
SnakeChomp
Filthy Rich wx Solver
Filthy Rich wx Solver
Posts: 235
Joined: Sun Oct 10, 2004 2:53 am

Post by SnakeChomp »

I put a precompiled Windows binary here as the "wxIFM 2.0 Alpha Demo": https://sourceforge.net/project/showfil ... _id=172996.

You'll need the 9.0 version of the Microsoft CRT installed to be able to run it. Make sure you keep the manifest file in the same place as the exe file or it won't run.
orbitcowboy
I live to help wx-kind
I live to help wx-kind
Posts: 178
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 9:01 am

Post by orbitcowboy »

SnakeChomp wrote:I put a precompiled Windows binary here as the "wxIFM 2.0 Alpha Demo": https://sourceforge.net/project/showfil ... _id=172996.

You'll need the 9.0 version of the Microsoft CRT installed to be able to run it. Make sure you keep the manifest file in the same place as the exe file or it won't run.
Are the sources of 2.0 available?
OS: Ubuntu 9.04 (32/64-Bit), Debian Lenny (32-Bit)
Compiler: gcc/g++-4.3.3 , gcc/g++-4.4.0
wxWidgets: 2.8.10,2.9.0
SnakeChomp
Filthy Rich wx Solver
Filthy Rich wx Solver
Posts: 235
Joined: Sun Oct 10, 2004 2:53 am

Post by SnakeChomp »

You'll have to grab the source from SVN.
Use the sourceforge page.
huge
In need of some credit
In need of some credit
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Feb 06, 2006 12:53 pm
Contact:

Post by huge »

Hi,
I did some work with this ages ago, and wrote some code for saving the layouts. Not sure how much the code has changed, but you may be interested in:

http://gamemosaic.com/wxifm/index.html
Post Reply