wxErlang - How much it has been used?

Questions / Help
1

As a contributor to Wings3D project I’ve been using it eventually, but despite I have search about it over the internet it looks like it’s not much in use.

Last year I found wxFormBuilder project - which is a form designer and code generation for C++, Python, XRC, wxLua and PHP - and I made a fork to include support to wxErlang in order to allow me to prototype dialogs for Wings3D (because doing that visually is much better).

I’m asking because this year the project owner is evaluating my PR and told me he would be interested to add it “since the wxWidgets port seems to be an integral part of Erlang”, but I’m also must make some adjustments and be interested to maintain it (as he doesn’t know Erlang).

So, if there is not much application for wxErlang, I think the PR has not reason to be added to his project - I can keep it to myself and update it on my needs.

Cheers

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2

For what it’s worth, I had an idea that I wanted to make a game so I tried using it but found it difficult, even with all the examples in wx:demo(), because I couldn’t find a wxFormBuilder-type application.

Mind you, that’s just a hobby project and never intended to be anything serious.

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3

wxErlang is used by OTP in for example Observer.

That alone is a pretty good reason to have nice wxErlang support in tools like this. Both for the core team and any contributors.

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I use wx to make little visualizers and graphs for when I’m either debugging or making some transiently-lived servers, a form builder could indeed be quite a useful thing.

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5

I am using it to build a small UI for the client part of my product.

Also, Dominic & Co made elixir-desktop, which uses wxWebView to build desktop and mobile apps.

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@micheus I find this highly interesting, have you taken it any further?

I think wxErlang is superb. Possibly underused due to its complexity? But a project like FormBuilder might help folks to get started.

EDIT: ok, just seen your open PR here: Added support to Erlang language (wxErlang) by Micheus · Pull Request #650 · wxFormBuilder/wxFormBuilder · GitHub

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Hi @afa.
That code needs to be updated. They changed a lot of things and I had already started to work on it early this year. But, it was not my priority.

As can be seen on that PR, the author has asked for a couple of things and I did all the one that could be applied to Erlang. He was interested to make it part of the project, which would be nice (I think).
In my repository there is a windows version available for evaluation and it would be interesting to have a feedback about the way to run the code.

The source can be created to be a external module or the main program. I built it based on my experience on Wings3D code, but that may not be the better option. I would like to hear from the “real” wx users about it.

There are some limitation (mainly, because not all wxWidgets content is ported in wx), but the possibility to draw the window/form visually is very handy.

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Thanks for your update!
Would your branch work on Ubuntu too? (although I must say that wxFormBuilder doesn’t seem to currently build on 22.04)

Hm, Wings3D is built on wxErlang, right? What makes it not “real”?

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Would your branch work on Ubuntu too? (although I must say that wxFormBuilder doesn’t seem to currently build on 22.04)

I didn’t try.

Hm, Wings3D is built on wxErlang, right? What makes it not “real”?

I’m not sure I can answer this properly (probably @dgud can), but except by the main window and some others we can dock on it, the other form/dialogs are built in a nonconventional way. We use customized functions that translate the commands in wx controls to build them - even the menus are constructed that way.
It something inherited from the old UI module which used ESDL (Erlang port to SDL).

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