[LV2] The UI type problem

[David Robillard]

On Tue, 2014-02-04 at 03:06 +0000, Harry van Haaren wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 3:00 AM, David Robillard <d at drobilla.net> wrote:
> > so I'll just rant to myself here and go down in archived history as the
> > lone crazy LV2 guy :P
> 
> Sorry to destroy that idea ;)

Well, perhaps you are just a figment of my imagination! :)

> I'd just like to chime in that I like the fact that this discussion is
> taking place, it sounds like
> LV2 is pre-empting the expected embedding toolkit mess with Wayland / etc
> etc.

Well, as much as will be possible, anyway.  The only real totally
portable 'universal surface' would be something like an RGBA buffer, but
this means GL is out, and raises the massive question of how user input
could be handled (which is actually the hard part).

Making the actual implementation of UIs across windowing systems is the
job of portability layers like Pugl or toolkits.  I think the best the
host:UI interface can do is gracefully degrade to external, so the UI
can pop up a window if the host and UI can't negotiate a commonly
understood widget type.

Perhaps Pugl should just become the first library included in the LV2
distribution, after being rehashed a bit to support cairo surfaces (or
maybe raw RGBA?) as well as GL?  It would be nice if the examples didn't
use Gtk, which is problematic, and also on the wrong side of a great
compatibility rift.

-- 
dr