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Best Language For Experimental GUI Demo Projects?
New submitter GrantRobertson writes with a question about quickly developing prototypes for new interface design concepts "My research/tinkering will be along two main lines: (1) Devising entirely new graphical user interface elements, mostly in 2D, though often in a true or simulated 3-D space. I am working on ways to visualize, navigate, and manipulate very, VERY large data-sets of academic research information. (2) Computer based education software, though of a type never seen before. This will combine some of the GUI elements invented in (1) as well as displaying standard HTML or HTML5 content via a browser engine My requirements are: (A) A decent IDE ecosystem; (B) A decent set of libraries, but ones that don't lock me in to a particular mind-set like Swing does in Java. (Boxes in boxes in boxes, Oh My!); (C) An ability to easily draw what I want, where I want and make any surface of that 3D object become a source for capturing events; (D) Ease of cross-platform use. (So others can easily look at my examples and run with them.); (E) No impediments to open-source licensing my code or for others to go commercial with it either (as I have seen when I looked into Qt). So, should I just stick with Java and start looking outside the box for GUI toolkits? Or is there something else out there I should be looking at?"
I'm not sure what impediments Qt has to proprietization of software since it's LGPL nowadays; in any case, Qt Quick and GNOME's Clutter seem like they could be a useful. Read on for more context.
"I am not a professional software developer and never have any aspirations to become one. I've been through a generic university computer science degree-program and I can tolerate C++ begrudgingly. I do OK with Java and prefer it, though I still have to look up every API before I use it. Most of the code I want to write will be not much more than prototypes or proof of concept stuff for the research I will be doing, rather than full-on applications ready for distribution and use. I can learn any language out there, if need be, but these days it is more about the ecosystem than the core language. IDEs, libraries, cross-platform compatibility, user support, open source licensing."
I don't always write GUIs, but when I do, I prefer wx. But in all seriousness - I hate writing GUIs. I write embedded C for a living and am lost when it comes to the differences between window manager(s) on Linux or Windows or whatever. When I need to whip something up quick (and it's not embedded, and we're not going to sell it) sometimes I switch over to Python, and if that quick thing needs a GUI, wxPython (the port of wxWidgets from C to python) is something you can tack on there with minimum hassle. If you need a portion to be fast for your math calcs or whatever you can write that part in C. There's a boatload of tutorials via google (and youTube).
Yes...I know...Pascal..Ugh (it's a shame so many people under rate Delphi's Object Pascal). But, Embarcadero Delphi will enable you to build FireMonkey based apps that can run on Mac, Windows and iOS. FireMonkey still has a ways to go. However, if you look at the whitepapers posted on the Embarcadero.com website, you will see some interesting stuff. FireMonkey is evolving. Once of the nice things is that it can use the GPU vs the CPU for rendering. This makes 2D and 3D rendering a piece of cake. Additionally, FireMonkey controls can (and should be) stylized. The number of effects one can achieve for a simple button is amazing. Imagine what one can do in terms of designing new UI paradigms.
Are are some blog on using FireMonkey to render functions and demonstrate wave interference (in 3D).
http://blogs.embarcadero.com/ao/2012/02/02/39215/
http://blogs.embarcadero.com/ao/2012/01/30/39208/
http://blogs.embarcadero.com/ao/2012/01/27/39206/
and, for a commercial product by TMS Software http://blogs.embarcadero.com/davidi/2012/02/07/41510/
FreePascal w/ Lazarus is another way to experiment (and, get Linux and ARM as target environments as well). FireMonkey for iOS depends on the ARM compiler to bring the apps to iOS (at least until Embarcadero writes their own ARM compiler).
Granted, the tool isn't cheap. But, if you have the budget, it's worth adding to your tool bag.
Another alternative is getting intimately family with JQuery and the DOM. There is a lot you can do to experiment with new UIs.
You dismissed the one framework that would do what you want. LGPL and if really necessary, Digia does not charge that much for a commercial license. I've been doing cross platform work for 20 years. Java was my first foray. Star Framework (Star Office was written with this) was a pretty good framework. But QT beats them all hands down.
If you want demonstrations and "proof of concept" stuff, you want a language which is expressive, not a language which is easy to learn or which generates heavily optimized code.
In the demo phase, you're not really worried about performance. The goal is to have something showing as quickly as possible, and not worry too much about how fast it runs, or how much memory it takes. Overspec your demo system for the time being (ie - make it really fast and install lots of memory), and once you have a reasonable interface go back and recode it in a simpler language which can be more easily optimized.
Languages which are simple to learn (c++, for example) are generally not very expressive. You end up wasting tons of time debugging issues of memory allocation, library interface details, and datatype conversion.
Languages which are expressive are a little harder to learn, but any individual line in the expressive language does a lot more. Since you are writing fewer lines, and since the fewer lines do more, you end up making programs more easily and in less time.
Yes, the programs will execute a little slower, but as mentioned, this is not important in the demo stage. Your productivity will be much higher.
Perl was written by a linguist, not an engineer. As such, it's harder to learn (it's got tons more keywords and context), but once you get the hang of it it's much more expressive. The following single line:
@Lines = sort { $a->{Name} cmp $b->{Name} } @Lines;
unfolds into several lines of C++, plus a subroutine definition with datatype definitions. The following line:
@Files = <c:/Windows/*.exe>;
can be implemented using one of over a dozen possible library calls in C++, but is builtin in perl. You don't have to look up the library call interface specific to your system.
I hear that Python is also expressive, although I don't use it.
Python Matplotlib covers some of what you might be interested in and it can be used with other GUI toolkits see http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook/Matplotlib and http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/ - at the very minimum it might provide some food for thought about the feature-set you're seeking.
Don't assume too much in terms of playing nice with straight-up JAVA. I've been building a lot of interactive video projects (kinect interface with JSON queries to databases holding IP addresses, for mapping animations on spheres) and I've been using the Eclipse rather than the Proceesing IDE. There's a lot of weird shortcuts that the Processing IDE does to make it easy for n00bs (that's why I got into it ;) but once you start doing stuff with openGL, threading, or (most importantly for the OP) using fonts and UI elements, things get really convoluted. And the debugger blows.
Not to say you shouldn't do it-- but while the Processing learning curve is pretty easy, it gets quite steep when you want to incorporate more high-level functionality.
That said, there's a lot of libraries that will address most stuff you'll need in terms of UI elements-- controlP5 is one that deals with text fields, text boxes, etc, for instance.
My suggestion for you would be to check out Lazarus and Free Pascal. Lazarus is a cross platform and open source clone of Borland's (or whoever the hell own the company now) Delphi. Free Pascal is the compiler it uses, and it is pretty damn close to source compatible with Delphi, and also provides compatibility modes for other Pascal dialects as well, including it's own Object Pascal mode which fixes some of the stupid design decisions in the Delphi version of Object Pascal. The compiler itself has very speedy compilation times compared to C++ compilers, and generates decently quick code as well. The compiler itself is very mature and well maintained, and it gaining new features all the time. Lazarus is the IDE, which provides you with a RAD environment to quickly piece together the UI, and it is packed with all kinds of awesome features. The LCL, it's supporting library, wraps all of these functions up in a way that makes it very easy to deploy cross platform applications. It covers OSX, Linux (GTK+ and Qt), and Windows. The Free Pascal compiler can compile code for many more platforms, and has in fact supported some even before GCC. If you stick with the LCL, just about everything is covered between platforms and it uses the native components of the platform it is compiled for. It has a very healthy community, with plenty of bindings for all different kinds of libraries. It also provides a good method for creating custom components and reusing them, allowing you to install them in to the IDE and drag and drop them in the form designer just like you would with a standard button or text box. I've never done any stuff with 3-d graphics, but there's all kinds of OpenGL stuff available, and anything you can do in the native widgetsets you can do with Lazarus. The issue with Lazarus is that the IDE is still beta, and there still are a few bugs here and there, but they are fixed pretty quick, and there aren't any major show stoppers. The big issue is that it uses GDB for debugging (there is a native Object Pascal debugger in the works, but it won't be finished anytime soon), which is really aimed towards C based languages, so debugging isn't always smooth. Most of the basic tasks, like setting breakpoints and stepping through a program/function work fine, but there are a few issues with the differences between Pascal datatypes and C datatypes that can make things confusing.
The reason I recommend this tool is because even though it doesn't have a massive ecosystem like C++, it is coherent and works very well between platforms. The Object Pascal language is very easy to learn, it's powerful, and well designed. While not as fast as C or C++, is you look at the alioth debian language shootout page, it is pretty quick compared to other languages. It provides access to all of the familiar C library functions, and includes all kinds of stuff in the language for compatibility with the C language. It's not the old Pascal from the Turbo Pascal days that people like to bash, almost all of the complaints I hear about the language itself were taken care of a decade ago. The only issue I can really think of is that the language can be a bit verbose compared to C, but compared to Java it's pretty succinct.
For that matter, I had to look down to about the 8th page of google hits for "opengl hello world" to find one that did NOT use an abstraction library. Which tells you how many people actually do that. So, "use openGL" isn't much help. How about, "try using openGL throgh wxWidgets" or somesuch. Nobody uses straight openGL.
I'd use [software environment and platform here] ...
No. Just use paper and pencil. Create a story board, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_board, showing how the user will use the interface.
Go to the academics that represent your users. Ask them what they want to see in a visualization, how they expect to do a search, how they expect to manipulate things. Give them paper and pencil and tell them to just draw things however they think it should be, not what they are used to seeing in their current environment and applications, rather whatever they can imagine would be a good way, a way that feels natural.
Why not just use Flash & ActionScript, along with Unreal. Specifically, Scaleform. Since it already does the "never before seen" 3D GUIs you want, and game engines are particularly good at visualising extremely large data sets (we call them game worlds).
Any amount of searching "HTML 3D" would have turned up WebGL, which uses OpenGL in existing browsers... That would be a good prototype platform for me.
I take particular issue with the childish statements against using Java (and Swing), considering they already support 3D Swing components (see XTrans demo). Swing displays HTML components, even in tool tips. In fact, there is already an entire 3D collaboration framework in Java ready for any "Never Seen Before" GUIs you wish to dream up... It displays HTML, images, & PDFs etc.
Furthermore, their indignant remarks smack of ignorance, considering Java 2D & Java 3D exist, and both have rich non standard box shape intersection libraries, which can be used to create custom components of any shape or position, hierarchical or not restricted only in that they should be used in a Canvas, to save yourself some time.
They want someone to hand them a magic library that has all the bells and whistles already to go, but heaven forbid any of them have an API that requires using... Have fun inventing that shiny new wheel.