Feelin release 050517

[Gofromiel]

Feelin is an object-oriented system (OOS) for the AmigaOS. It provides two things : A small shared library, fast and powerful (the object-system's core), offering everything needed to create a complete object-oriented environnement ; And an extensible system to create and maintain GUIs. Although Feelin comes with a lot of GUI oriented classes, Feelin is not limited to that, and can be used for a variety of projects.



New preference item standard

Preference  items  are  now  defined  in  a  CSS  style  format  e.g. $button-frame  (note well the dollar sign). The preference system has been partially rewritten and is now even more efficient.
 
Preview / Pop / Adjust
   
Created an adjust system with two new base classes FC_Adjust and FC_Preview. All previous adjust and pop classes are now subclasses of those two. FC_Adjust and FC_Preview subclasses are very modular, it's      so simple now to create preview, popup and adjust classes.

Documents : XML / HTML
   
FC_XMLApplication has been split to create FC_XMLObject. FC_XMLDocument has been split to create FC_Document, which is now the base class for documents interpreting. FC_HTMLDocument is one of  its new subclass. As FC_XMLDocument is used to parse XML code, FC_HTMLDocument can be used to parse HTML code (which is less formal).
   
XMLObjects

Feelin is not only able to create whole applications from XML  files, but  is  now  also  able  to  create  XML  objects  anywhere  in your applications (and classes) very easily ! For example, all groups used by the preference editor are generated from XML files.

XMLApplications was a first step in the separation between code and GUI, now the user can do WHAT HE WANTS with its GUI.
   
FC_PreferenceGroup totaly rewritten
   
ALL preference groups (group objects used by the preference editor to adjust  preferences)  are now using XMLObjects ! XML files are available in the "Feelin:XMLSources/Feelin/Preferences" directory.

Only ONE tiny little line of code is needed to create a preference group !!  It  was already very easy to create preference groups, now everything is AUTOMATIC ! Thanks to the new preference items standard (e.g.  $button-frame), the XML support and the FPreferenceScript type the whole preference process (object generation, loadin,  saving  and object disposal) is TOTALY AUTOMATIC !
     
A LOT of preference items have been added to a LOT of classes, making      the GUI EXTREMELY configurable.

Layout & Rendering
   
At last, FC_ImageDisplay is capable of drawing GRADIENTS. This awaited improvement make the GUI really nice and soft.
   
Feelin GUI is now powered by a  new  layout  rethinking  system,  the fourth  and  the last (I hope), it's just fabulous ! Rethink requests are now buffered, even if 20 rethinks are requested, only 1 redraw is performed  ! And as usual only modified objects are updated.
     
Window expansion is nicer now. The window is expanded from all sides,      thus  a  centered  window  expanding  remains  centered,  instead  of expanding only to the left and the bottom.

FC_Area and FC_Window are  now  subclasses  of FC_Frame,  which  now handles the FA_Back on its own making refreshing just perfect :-) The complex refresh mode has been improved and is now fabulous !

Events
   
The new event code FV_EVENT_BUTTON_WHEEL of class FF_EVENT_BUTTON has been added and can be used to react on mouse wheel. Most classes are now uses this nice features. In fact, eveything that can be adjusted with the mouse can also be adjusted with mouse wheel e.g. lists, sliders, proportionals, cycles, event group pages !
 
Dialogs

Subclass of FC_Window, the new FC_Dialog class can be used to create a lot of commom requesters e.g. "Ok", "Yes | No", "Save | Use | Cancel"... Custom objects can be added very easily making dialog window  fully customizable e.g. FC_PreferenceEditor is now a subclass of FC_Dialog.
     
FC_List

FC_List has been particuliarly updated and is now become as powerful as  configurable. Column format is now defined in XML and a lot of features are available.

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With, 20 new classes (76 classes available), I've done my best to offer a  more  complete, powerful and pleasant framework for Amiga developers; and an attractive GUI for users that like customizing A LOT :-)

[moood]

Those colors in those screenshots hurts my eyes!!!  ;-) :-P

What about native versions of Feelin for OS4, Aros and Morphos?

Except from the color theme great work!

[moood]

Ooops... Double post... Sorry... Please remove!

[Crumb]

mmm the feature list is impressive, but IMHO it may be a good idea to choose other colours for the screenshots. Maybe showing an "OS4" theme and a MorphOS theme would make it look more professional. I think that thin borders usually look better than bigger ones too.

These suggestions are just cosmetical ones. BTW, how are the MOS/OS4/AROS ports going? having Feelin running in more Amigoid systems is important if you really want to make it widely used.

To make it look more integrated with the system I would use the default window font as default feelin window font. It doesn't look nice to have small OS windows and big Feelin ones. And I would make it use a border of the same width as default too... if the user chooses other settings, ok, but default one should mach the rest of the OS.

It would be nice to show how good is image integration too (like having images in the listbrowser columns, having images inside the GUI, or just backdrop images). It would make it more attractive.

These two images use better colours than the other screenshots IMHO...

[cecilia]

Ooops... Double post... Sorry... Please remove!

must have been the colors
:roflmao:

the web site has different colors. i'm not a big fan of pink, either, but it's an interesting design style.

good work!

[Gofromiel]

It's summertimer guys, that's why the previews are so "warm" :-D

[AmigaEd]

@Gofromiel

This looks really impressive.

I'm a novice at this kind of stuff. Is there a tutorial that explains the how to make the xml applications in to an executable program. I tried getting some of the xml demos to run, but i couldn't get them to work. For example... how do i get the "Hello.xml" in the demos to run?

Thank you,
AmigaEd

[Gofromiel]

XML files don't "run", they need to be interpreted by Feelin. From WB double-click on the "hello.xml" icon. From the shell type "XMLApplication hello.xml".

Note that some XML files are used as XML objects and not XML applications ! e.g. the "Lines" demo has two parts : one is the code (compiled from "lines.c") where the custom class is defined, and the other one is the GUI part defined in the "lines.xml" file. In this case, you only launch "lines", but you can modify "lines.xml" (its GUI) as you like.

I'm not sure to be very clear :-D

[AmigaEd]

@Gofromiel,
Thank you for the information. Yes, You were very clear. I guess I really did know that the XML file would be interpreted and not compiled but it was late at night when I posted so I wasn't thinking clearly.

Anyway, when I try to run the "hello.xml" by clicking on it, it does not run. I looked at the icon information and it does appear to be set for XMLApplication. Perhaps I did not do the installation correctly. Anyway, I won't beat this to death here. If I can't get it srted out I will make a post in the forum on your site.

Thank You,
AmigaEd

[Kaminari]

Great stuff Olivier. Any chance to see Feelin support TTEngine in a later version?

[Gofromiel]

I was already thinking about it. I'll create a new class FC_Font for this. What bother me, it's the slowliness of TTEngine... but it needs to be done :-)