Exactly what it (the thread) says on the tin: a GUI for configuring gcnclient. Inspired by "Kurt"'s difficulties figuring out how to get gcnclient running earlier today.
Here's the basic GUI outline. Not yet functional (for launching gcnclient), but it shouldn't be more than a few hours work yet.
Not visible here are the tooltips documenting each option, hopefully allowing people to get a client up and running without reading
any of the documentation.
Oooh, that looks nice! Will gcnclient.exe be launched in a separate window, or will it run in the background? If it's running in the background, it would be hard to get error messages from gcnclient.exe for debugging.
Could go either way. If I end up have it completely suppress the gcnclient window, that's what the status bar is good for; I can display the exit code if it exits unexpectedly.
Or just add an option to show or hide the subprocess for great justice.
I vote a dropdown somewhere that lets you pick among a few standard hubs, like WebHub and IRCHub. What sayest thou?
Entirely possible. I'll just change the virtual hub control to a ComboBox and prepopulate. WebHub, IRCHub and OblitHub are the ones that spring to mind. Anything else?
Tari wrote:
Entirely possible. I'll just change the virtual hub control to a ComboBox and prepopulate. WebHub, IRCHub and OblitHub are the ones that spring to mind. Anything else?
That's about it. I'd like it if people could still type in arbitrary hub names, though, if that's at all feasible.
I would also suggest that if on windows an option to launch the filter wizard so the 84+ can be added to the libusb0.sys filter driver.
KermMartian wrote:
Tari wrote:
[snip]
That's about it. I'd like it if people could still type in arbitrary hub names, though, if that's at all feasible. See below.
TheStorm wrote:
I would also suggest that if on windows an option to launch the filter wizard so the 84+ can be added to the libusb0.sys filter driver.
If I can figure out a way to do that without too much trouble, sure.
I've got gcnclient launching OK, but it seems to hate me since I always seem to just get the help text back out. Here's some more of the GUI anyway:
Should be pretty foolproof now, disabling the start button until you've entered options that make sense. IRCHub and WebHub are the only prespecified virtual hubs, but you can type anything into the combobox for an arbitrary virtual hub. I also added that checkbox to add the -r option.
If you really want to make it robust for the driver stuff look into libwdi it should allow you to install the filter, the arduino and any other libusb driver needed. It even supports drivers that libusb doesn't support yet. (Mostly because the maintainer is looking more and more like a 68k community member I will refrain from mentioning and dragging his feet on a release.)
Based on experience, I vote making the checkbox set by default. What can I do to help you make the gcnclient not just spit out Usage at you?
Since I haven't touched this lately and lack the motivation to set up libusb and friends such that the client program will actually run on my system, here's a build for people to play with. Rumor has it that it actually works, but I'm sure there will be some cases in which it's not terribly graceful.
gcnclientgui.zip (518 kB)
tari, you would not mind if I try to make something like this in C#? I think I should be able too work something out with System.IO, if I am not mistaken..
You must install the .Net Framework 4.0! Angry Windows is angry!
I'll give this a try as soon as the framework finishes installing.
Hopefully this will help people like our current Gossamer user.
Edit: May I please suggest a * next to the required "fields"? I obviously know which ones are optional, but I bet the average user does not, and I think * is the common way to denote required fields.
Also, I think it would be a good idea to add OblitHub too...
qazz42 wrote:
tari, you would not mind if I try to make something like this in C#? I think I should be able too work something out with System.IO, if I am not mistaken..
This is already C# (hence the .NET 4 dependency that Kerm complained about).
On that .NET version note, it builds fine as a .NET 3.5 program, so I'll retarget to that framework version for future builds.
KermMartian wrote:
Edit: May I please suggest a * next to the required "fields"? I obviously know which ones are optional, but I bet the average user does not, and I think * is the common way to denote required fields.
It should grey out the start button when you haven't supplied all the required options, so I don't see much point in having an additional marker. Feel free to convince me otherwise, though.
It most certainly does gray it out, but it still seems like a bit of a guessing game to figure out which fields I need to type in to get the Start menu to activate.
Makes sense. I'll add some indication for required parameters to my list.
Tari wrote:
Makes sense. I'll add some indication for required parameters to my list.
Huzzah, thanks. Other than that, it seemed to work quite nicely for me.
I've been working on some upgrades. Only thing definitely left on my list is saving and loading session settings from file, then I'll release and look into filter driver setup automation.
I've also started building an installer, which will help prevent issues with missing .NET dependencies (it's capable of downloading the runtimes for you). (It's also been retargeted for .NET 3.5, so it'll work out of the box on Windows 7.)
This is cool! Does it also work under linux?
Register to Join the Conversation
Have your own thoughts to add to this or any other topic? Want to ask a question, offer a suggestion, share your own programs and projects, upload a file to the file archives, get help with calculator and computer programming, or simply chat with like-minded coders and tech and calculator enthusiasts via the site-wide AJAX SAX widget? Registration for a free Cemetech account only takes a minute.
»
Go to Registration page
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum