vgui : Multi-platform user-interface using OpenGL.

VGUI has two main purposes: firstly, to provide an easy way to display OpenGL in a user-interface, and secondly, to allow users to write code once that will produce a simple user-interface on many platforms (UNIX, Linux and Windows)

For every supported GUI toolkit (eg. MFC, Qt, GTK), VGUI provides a vgui_adaptor (eg. vgui_mfc_adaptor, vgui_qt_adaptor, vgui_gtk_adaptor) that provides an interface to an OpenGL rendering area. This adaptor is plugged into a GUI and produces a rectangular area on which OpenGL can be displayed. The adaptor contains a tableau which is used to draw the OpenGL and to receive events from the user (see vgui_tableau).

Some of the most useful tableaux are:

• vgui_image_tableau : loads and displays an image.
• vgui_easy2D_tableau : displays two-dimensional geometric objects.
• vgui_text_tableau : displays text
• vgui_viewer2D_tableau : functions to view 2D objects (zoom, drag, center).
• vgui_composite_tableau : holds many children all of whom receive events.
• vgui_deck_tableau : holds many child tableaux but only one receives events.
• vgui_poly_tableau : renders its children in sub-rectangles of its viewport.
• vgui_grid_tableau : renders its child tableaux as a rectangular grid.
• vgui_rubberband_tableau : rubberband 2D objects.
• vgui_enhance_tableau : magnify/display another tableau around mouse pointer.
• vgui_roi_tableau : makes a ROI of an image act like a whole image.
• vgui_easy3D_tableau : displays 3D geometric objects.
• vgui_viewer3D_tableau : functions to view 3D objects (rotate, zoom, etc).
• vgui_vrml_tableau : displays VRML.
• vgui_blackbox_tableau : records and plays back events.
• vgui_debug_tableau : prints events then forwards them to a child tableau.
• vgui_shell_tableau : to go at the top of one's tableau hierarchy (contains vgui_clear_tableau, vgui_quit_tableau and vgui_tview_launcher_tableau).

You can write your GUI in, for example, MFC and use vgui_adaptor/vgui_tableau to produce an OpenGL area. In fact, this is what you will have to do if you want to produce a complicated or very professional looking user-interface.

Alternatively, you may also use VGUI to write a simple user-interface that will use native GUI toolkits on each platform. The same code written using VGUI can be used to generate user-interfaces in MFC on Windows or Qt on Linux, for example.

Here is an example using VGUI to display an image in a window:

* #include <vgui/vgui.h>
* #include <vgui/vgui_image_tableau.h>
* #include <vgui/vgui_viewer2D.h>
* int main(int argc, char **argv)
* {
*   vgui::init(argc, argv);
*   vgui_image_tableau_new image("my-image.jpg");
*   vgui_viewer2D_tableau_new viewer(image);
*   return vgui::run(viewer, image->width(), image->height());
* }
* 

There are more examples for VGUI on the VXL webpage and in vgui/examples. Also xcv uses VGUI and you can find its code in oxl/xcv.

Lead

Joe Mundy is responsible for co-ordinating significant changes to vgui. http://sourceforge.net/sendmessage.php?touser=527125