Menus and Newt

Hi all,

I was thinking to add a menu bar to my GL application that actually uses Newt.

The GLWindow API provides almost everything to be happy with a single frame. However, even if I do not intend to add a complete GUI, I would like to add a menu bar and probably the system open/save dialog and popups to better integrate my application to the desktop (on Linux, OS X and Windows).

I was wondering if there is a preferred path to follow without losing all the goodness of Newt ?

- Just a bare AWT Frame which has the ability to wrap a Newt window ? However how to pass into fullscreen properly ? What about HiDPI screen and menu support ?
- Use SWT ?
- Use Swing alongside the Newt canvas ?
- Maybe JavaFX ?
- Another way ?

Does someone has some experience on this ?

Thanks a lot !

Hi

If you plan to use the fullscreen mode, forget AWT / Swing as its fullscreen mode is partially broken under GNU Linux with some major window managers.

Maybe you can have a look at JOGL Graph API if it's enough for your needs.

Otherwise, there are several good UI APIs based on JOGL, Unlicense Lib has an excellent UI toolkit, JMonkeyEngine 3 and JogAmp's Ardor3D Continuation has some UI APIs too.

If you use only the windowed mode, you can simply use NewtCanvasAWT in a Swing/AWT GUI and even put it into a SwingNode to make it work with JavaFX, the former works, the latter might have some limitations.

Thanks Julien,

The problem is that I would like to be able to switch between fullscreen and windowed. To give some context, I am trying to do a very simple drawing application working with a stylus like wacom ones for example. Most of the time it is a good thing to have fullscreen but users want also a windowed mode.

That said, the Newt canvas does not want to switch to fullscreen under OSX actually (it freezes the application). It works very well under Windows. I did not tested yet under Linux.

Now I also tested NewtCanvasAWT. It works as expected under OSX but under windows the window cannot gain the focus. The same code works well with a GLCanvas, but if I understood well, Newt has better perfomance (and I definitively prefer the Newt API).

As for GUIs, I only want a very basic menu (mainly to be a good desktop citizen). I do not plan to use a very complicated UI, and I thought I might try to do it using OpenGL directly, but I think JOGL graph UI definitively deserve a look. Is there a better place to start ?

Thanks for your time.

The last time an end user tested my game under OSX 10.10, the fullscreen mode was working. Have you written a bug report about that?

I advise you to look at com.jogamp.opengl.test.junit.graph.demos.GPUUISceneGLListener04, it's a good and simple example to start using JOGL Graph UI.

Ok, my bad. I was switching to fullscreen from the EDT. Fullscreen is perfectly working under OSX.

I will look at the demos of the Graph API, thanks !

You're welcome. In the worst case, you can write your own JOGL menu.

Yes indeed, but my goal here is to work on the "desktop integration" so that the program integrates well under each OS. For example under OS X I would like the menu to appear at the top of the screen, the same under Ubuntu when available.

In the same way I wanted "native" load/save dialogs (and the only way I found actually is to force the use of AWT dialogs :))

Else, having fun with OpenGL/Jogl is always a good option ;)