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GUI Development Tools

Can anyone offer any advice on GUI development tools?

I'm looking to drive a 640x480 touch screen at >64K colours and also to use a touchscreen. The display will usually be textual but occasionally colour images and controls such as sliders, dials and buttons will be required. There will also be a requirement to decompress a large number of GIFs, but only one image at a time will be required. I'd also like something that integrates well with the IAR ARM compiler and it would be nice if there was some low-level control about where the framestore is and the ability to move it during execution.

I've been looking into the Segger EmWin tool mainly and it seems pretty good but you have to buy an awful lot of add-ons before it becomes useable. The SwellSoft PEG+ package is dearer to start with but includes many of things you pay extra for from Segger and works out to be a similar price in practice, although doesn't seem to have particularly good IAR support.

Does anyone have any experience with these packages or perhaps someone can recommend another one that I haven't looked at yet? Any experience or advice will be gratefully received.

Reply to
Tom
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"Tom" wrote in message news:42f86d87$0$1318$ snipped-for-privacy@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...

Look at uC/GUI at

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--
Scott
Validated Software Corp.
Reply to
Not Really Me

Thnkas for that, although it does look like another one where the base package isn't a lot of use until you buy all the extras. Have you had any experience using it? If you have then would I be right in assuming that you been using their RTOS as well and, if so, how was it?

Reply to
Tom

I use Seggers emWin and their RTOS embOS on a ARM7 system with a 320x240 TTF display. The Segger tools are very stable. They use (and sell) the IAR ARM7 compiler and give support for this compiler.

Both GUI and RTOS has very good documentation and can be recommended. The support is excellent and very very fast.

Klaus

Reply to
skiron1

Klaus,

Many thanks for your reply and it serves to confirm that I've made the right decision. Does EmWin give you control over where your framestore is and can you move it on-the-fly? The reason I ask is that I'm planning to tinker with the framestore pointer in order to implementent a virtual desktop feature. I also plan to refresh the images from various types of memory at different stages of program execution.

Tom

Reply to
Tom

Hi Tom

I do not understand what you mean. The windows handling is very good, you have callbacks, parents-clients, a selfmade dynamic memory system (with handles) and much more.

Download the Trial Version from

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I develop most parts of the GUI in the emWin simulator on Windows (VC++). Then copy the code in the IAR project, compile and debug the non GUI parts.

Ask the support at segger. They are very helpful.

Hope I can help you. We also tried SwellSoft PEG+, but IMHO emWin is better.

Klaus

Reply to
skiron1

What I mean is that the LCD driver refreshes itself regularly from an area of memory called the framestore. I thought that if I move where the controller thinks the start of the store is further up the memory then I would have a very efficient scrolling mechanism.

I've got that but I'm waiting on some hardware (which should be here today I hope) to enable a proper test.

Sounds like it's worth investing in VC++. They make us use Borland here and I loathe it.

Good to know.

Well that settles it then, EmWin it is. Thanks for all your help.

Tom

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Reply to
Tom

They didn't developed their GUI - I think it is a relabeled EmWin from Segger.

We use the EmWin from Segger - only the base package without WM parts. It is not cheap and the license politic is not easy - but using the library was easy, no errors found and it is fast.

regards Martin

Reply to
Martin Kaul

The simulator is great - I developted the whole displaying parts of our firmware first using the simulator (with Borland C++Builder 6 ;-) ) and then presented the look&feel of the device our product managers. After this cycle the requirements were complete and I ported the software to the embedded firmware without needs of changing the code.

Currently I have two programs: The firmware and the Windows Simulator. Both base on the same sourcecode regarding the display parts. The Windows program now is used for easy debugging the display parts of the software and grabbing LCD pictures that are put into the user manual.

regards Martin

Reply to
Martin Kaul

Good point, I hadn't thought about the manuals yet - but who needs documentation ;-)

Many thanks for your reply

Reply to
Tom

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