Hi Silenio and Bogdan
Thanks for the information. I am interested in looking at the current sources, but having no prior experience in the e4 project structure, i'm not sure where is the link pointing to. Do you happen to have a full URL to a browsable / downloadable version of the source repository?
Another question that i have - and perhaps it will be clarified after seeing the code. Suppose the application has a button callback that adds a new control to the form. In the spirit of transition animations, this control slides in from one of the sides and is faded in while it moves. Here, i see three distinct layers:
1. The application layer that decides what needs to be animated.
2. The animation layer that tracks all registered application animations and at every pulse calls the relevant methods on the components (alpha / bounds / ...).
3. The UI
toolkit that supports changing these properties to be reflected on the screen.
Trident aims to be only the layer number 2. From what you have described, it appears that you are mainly talking about the layer number 3 and how OS toolkits differ in their support of changing the specific component / window properties. If this is true, i don't understand the sentence about win32 and gtk not supporting the animation. Perhaps you're talking about win32 / gtk controls not supporting custom alpha channel? Because all the animation engine is doing (at least in my view) is to change the component property every once in a while - hopefully often enough to provide the appearance of smooth change - and it's up to the native UI toolkit to support those properties. If i am wrong in my reading, please correct me.
To clarify Trident's place in the animation "lifecycle", here is an example from fading in a Swing window:
Window window = ....; // new
JFrame(), for instance
Timeline windowFadeIn = new Timeline(window);
windowFadeIn.addPropertyToInterpolate("opacity", 0.0f, 1.0f);
windowFadeIn.play();
Once Timeline.play() is called, Trident will call the Window.setOpacity() API with values going from 0.0f to 1.0f - asking the UI toolkit to change the opacity of the window.
So my question about animations in e4 is about the animation engine as the "controller" that asks the native toolkit to change the widget properties (alpha, bounds, ...). I would imagine that you already have something in place, and i was wondering whether Trident can be considered to be used for that part.
Thanks
Kirill
From: Silenio Quarti
<Silenio_Quarti@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: E4 Project developer mailing list <e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 9:19:54 AM
Subject: Re: [e4-dev] Animations in e4
Hi Kirill,
We have investigated and prototyped
an Animation API using the support available in some platforms. The API
has been implemented (to varying degrees of completion) on WPF, Cocoa,
Flex and Dojo. Currently there is no animation support on win32 and gtk.
QT could be an option since it provides an animation API. GTK 3.0 may provide
such an API in the future.
When it comes to animation, there are
a few features that the core widgets need: alpha, transformation and bitmap
effects. The platforms we have prototyped all have that support. If that
kind of support is not available in the core widgets, you are restricted
to animating custom draw widgets.
The prototypes are in the folders Eclipse
SWT Animation and Eclipse SWT Effects under:
dev.eclipse.org/e4/org.eclipse.e4.swt/bundles/org.eclipse.swt.e4
Silenio and Bogdan
Kirill Grouchnikov <kirillcool@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: e4-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
07/22/2009 06:19 PM
Please respond to
E4 Project developer mailing list <e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx> |
|
To
| E4 Project developer mailing list <e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
|
cc
|
|
Subject
| [e4-dev] Animations in e4 |
|
Tom,
Since Trident has its own dev mailing list, and now there is (or going
to be, hopefully) a discussion on the e4 dev mailing list, i would rather
not fragment this thing even further by splitting some of the dialog into
yet another list.
My general question about e4 is - what are the plans for animation capabilities
in e4? Is this being incubated in CWT / Nebula? Is this being floated at
a very generic level with no concrete discussions? Or perhaps this is being
discussed in bugzilla?
Thanks
Kirill
From: Tom Schindl <tom.schindl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: E4 Project developer mailing list <e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 3:11:59 PM
Subject: Re: [e4-dev] e4 release review slides
Hi,
It be great if you could outline your ideas at the nebula-dev mailing
list so that the developers their could respond.
Tom
Kirill Grouchnikov schrieb:
> Hi Tom
>
> How far along are you in the animation layer of CWT? Is there any
> documentation available on existing capabilities / future plans so
that
> i can compare it with Trident to see if anything is missing?
>
> Thanks
> Kirill
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Tom Schindl <tom.schindl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> *To:* E4 Project developer mailing list <e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 22, 2009 1:35:52 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [e4-dev] e4 release review slides
>
> Hi,
>
> At nebula we have the proposal of a project called CWT [1] and a start
> for animation code too. So I think we should collaborate on this.
>
> Tom
>
> [1]http://www.aspencloud.com/cwt
>
> Toedter, Kai schrieb:
>> Kirill,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have been following both the SceneGraph and your Trident activities
in
>> the last months. I would love to see your (swing) demo running
in an
>> SWT environment and discuss in this list how Trident might fit
into e4.
>>
>>
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>>
>>
>> Kai
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* e4-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:e4-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> [mailto:e4-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:e4-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx>]
>> *On Behalf Of *Kirill Grouchnikov
>> *Sent:* Dienstag, 21. Juli 2009 23:03
>> *To:* E4 Project developer mailing list
>> *Subject:* Re: [e4-dev] e4 release review slides
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> I have a question about slide 4 - about deferring the advanced
>> animations in SWT.
>>
>> I've been following this list for a few months, and i haven't
seen any
>> (significant) discussion on this topic. I've recently released
the first
>> official version of Trident animation library which has built
in support
>> for both Swing and SWT - including automatic support for threading
rules
>> and additional UI toolkit-specific features.
>>
>> The overview of support for UI toolkits is at [1], and examples
for SWT
>> can be found at [2]-[4].
>>
>> Is this something that would be of interest to the e4 project?
The core
>> Trident capabilities can be used to built more complex animations
such
>> as layout transitions, window fades, cross fades etc - as shown
in the
>> demo Swing application at [5]. And while the demo is in Swing,
i am
>> going to port it to SWT as well in the next few weeks.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Kirill
>>
>> [1] http://kenai.com/projects/trident/pages/UIToolkitSupport
>> [2] http://kenai.com/projects/trident/pages/SimpleSWTExample
>> [3] http://kenai.com/projects/trident/pages/ParallelSWTTimelines
>> [4] http://kenai.com/projects/trident/pages/KeyFrameExample
>> [5] http://vimeo.com/4622654
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> *From:* John Arthorne <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx>>
>> *To:* e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, July 21, 2009 10:59:57 AM
>> *Subject:* [e4-dev] e4 release review slides
>>
>>
>> I have prepared the docu-ware required by the Eclipse development
>> process for the e4 0.9 release. I have attached a draft of the
slides
>> here for e4 committers to review. Please let me know of any errors
or
>> ommissions.
>>
>>
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> e4-dev mailing list
>> e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/e4-dev
>
>
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