Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Block GUI

I've been working on the block GUI, and things are going pretty well. Before I talk about what I've been working on, I'll cut to the chase and include a picture:
Here one can see the current block interface (the graphic was found through a Google image search and is for testing only). Right now you can drag around the blocks, highlight different ports, and create connections by clicking on two ports sequentially.
I've taken pains to make this interface be pretty open to whatever sorts of blocks we want to throw at it: blocks can be represented by any picture or pictures, ports can be any size and can be in any location on the block, etc. The connections between the blocks move in real time as the blocks are dragged, as they should. As of right now there is no way to select or delete connections, but that's coming next.
All in all, the block diagram interface is nearing completion. At some point I'd like to replace the straight lines with nice splines, but other things are more important right now.

High-priority block-diagram tasks left:
  • allow for selection/deletion of connections
  • allow for selection/deletion of blocks
Lower priority:
  • allow modification of block parameters, perhaps through double-clicking on a block
  • smoothing the graphics of the connections (using splines or some such)

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