README
======
Twm4Nx is a port of twm, Tab Window Manager (or Tom's Window Manager)
version 1.0.10 to NuttX NX windows server. No, a port is not the right
word. It is a re-design of TWM from the inside out to work with the NuttX
NX server. The name Twm4Nx reflects this legacy. But Twm4Nx is more a
homage to TWM than a port of TWM.
The original TWM was based on X11 which provides a rich set of features.
TWM provided titlebars, shaped windows, several forms of icon management,
user-defined macro functions, click-to-type and pointer-driven keyboard
focus, graphic contexts, and user-specified key and pointer button bindings,
etc.
Twm4Nx, on the other hand is based on the NuttX NX server which provides
comparatively minimal support. Additional drawing support comes from
the NuttX NxWidgets library (which necessitated the change to C++).
Twm4Nx is greatly stripped down and targeted on small embedded systems
with minimal resources. For example, no assumption is made about the
availability of a file system; no .twmrc file is used. Bitmaps are not
used (other than for fonts).
The TWM license is, I believe compatible with the BSD license used by NuttX.
The origin TWM license required notice of copyrights within each file and
a full copy of the original license which you can find in the COPYING file.
within this directory.
STATUS
======
Progress:
2019-04-28: This port was brutal. Much TWM logic was removed because it
depended on X11 features (or just because I could not understand how to
use it). The replacement logic is only mostly in place but more
needs to be done to have a complete system (hence, it is marked
EXPERIMENTAL). The kinds of things that need to done are:
1. Right click should bring up a window list (like the icon manager???)
2. For TWM-like behavior, a window frame and toolbar should be highlighted
when the window has focus.
3. A right click on the toolbar should bring up a window-specific menu.
2019-05-02: Some testing progress. The system comes up, connects to and
initializes the VNC window. For some reason, the VNC client breaks the
connection. The server is no longer connected so Twm4Nx constipates and
and eventually hangs.
2019-05-08: I abandoned the VNC interface and found that things are much
better using a direct, hardware framebuffer. The background comes up
properly and the Icon Manager appears properly in the upper right hand
corner. The Icon Manager Window can be iconified or de-iconified.
The Icon Manager window can be grabbed by the toolbar title and moved
about on the window (the movement is not very smooth on the particular
hardware that I am working with).
2019-05-10: A left click on the background brings up the main menu. At
present there are only two options: "Desktop" which will iconify all
windows and "Twm4Nx Icon Manager" which will de-iconify and/or raise
the Icon Manager window to the top of the hierarchy. That latter option
is only meaningful when the desktop is very crowded.
2019-05-13: Added the NxTerm application. If enabled via
CONFIG_TWM4XN_NXTERM, there will now be a "NuttShell" entry in the Main
Menu. When pressed, this will bring up an NSH session in a Twm4Nx
window.
2019-05-14: We can now move an icon on the desktop. Includes logic to
avoid collisions with other icons and with the background image. That
later is an issue. The background image image widget needs to be
removed; it can occlude a desktop icon. We need to paint the image
directly on the background without the use of a widget.
2019-05-15: Resizing now seems to work correctly in Twm4Nx.
2019-05-20: Calibration screen is now in place.
2019-05-21: A "CONTEMPORARY" theme was added. Still has a few glitches.
2019-06-01: A retro, emulated segment LCD clock is now in place.
How To:
Icon Manager
- At start up, only the Icon Manager window is shown. The Icon Manager
is a TWM alternative to more common desktop icons. Currently Twm4Nx
supports both desktop icons and the Icon Manager.
Whenever a new application is started from the Main Menu, its name
shows up in the Icon Manager. Selecting the name will either de-
iconify the window, or just raise it to the top of the display.
Main Menu:
- A touch/click at any open location on the background (except the
image at the center or on another icon) will bring up the Main Menu.
Options:
o Desktop. Iconify all windows and show the desktop
o Twm4Nx Icom Manager. De-iconify and/or raise the Icon Manager to
the top of the display.
o Calibration. Perform touchscreen re-calibration.
o Clock. Start and instance of clock in the window. The uses the
the retro, LCD emulation of apps/graphics/slcd.
o NuttShell. Start and instance of NSH running in an NxTerm.
- All windows close after the terminal menu option is selected.
Window Toolbar
- Most windows have a toolbar at the top. It is optional but used
in most windows.
- The toolbar contains window title and from zero to 4 buttons:
o Right side: A menu button may be presented. The menu button
is not used by anything in the current implementation and is
always suppressed
o Left side: The far left is (1)the terminate button (if present).
If present, it will close window when selected. Not all windows can
be closed. You can't close the Icon Manager or menu windows, for
example. Then (2) a resize button. If presented and is selected,
then the resize sequence described below it started. This may
the be preceded by a minimize button that iconifies the window.
Moving a Window:
- Grab the title in the toolbar and move the window to the desired
position.
Resizing a Window:
- A window must have the green resize button with the square or it
cannot be resized.
- Press resize button. A small window should pop-up in the upper
left hand corner showing the current window size.
- Touch anywhere in window (not the toolbar) and slide your finger.
The resize window will show the new size but there will be no other
update to the display. It is thought that continuous size updates
would overwhelm lower end MCUs. Movements support include:
o Move toward the right increases the width of the window
o Move toward the left decreases the width of the window
o Move toward the bottom increases the height of the window
o Move toward the top decreases the height of the Window
o Other moves will affect both the height and width of the window.
- NOTE: While resizing, non-critical events from all other windows
are ignored.
Themes
- There are two themes support by the configuration system:
o CONFIG_TWM4NX_CLASSIC. Strong bordered windows with dark primary
colors. Reminiscent of Windows 98.
o CONFIG_TWM4NX_CONTEMPORARY. Border-less windows in pastel shades
for a more contemporary look.
Issues:
2019-05-16:
Twm4Nx is in a very complete state but only at perhaps "alpha" in its
maturity. You should expect to see some undocumented problems. If
you see such problems and can describe a sequence to actions to
reproduce the problem, let me know and I will try to resolve the
problems.
Here are all known issues and features that are missing:
TWM Compatibilities Issues:
1. Resizing works a little differently in Twm4Nx.
2. Right click should bring up a window list
3. For TWM-like behavior, a window frame and toolbar should be highlighted
when the window has focus.
4. A right click on the toolbar should bring up a window-specific menu.
There are no near-term plans to address these compatibility issues.
Other issues/bugs. All-in-all, I would say that Twm4Nx is maturing well
and is attaining stability. That being said, there are some issues and
untested functionality that should be addressed:
1. Icon drag movement includes logic to avoid collisions with other
icons and with the background image. That later is an issue. We
need to paint the image directly on the background without the
use of a widget.
2. There are a few color artifacts in the toolbar of the CONTEMPORARY
theme. These look like borders are being drawn around the toolbar
widgets (even though the are configured to be borderless).
3. Most Twm4Nx configuration settings are hard-coded in *_config.hxx header
files. These all need to be brought out and made accessible via Kconfig
files
4. I have seen some odd behavior when many NxTerm windows have been
opened (around 15). Specifically, I see failures to start NSH in the
windows so they come up blank. All other behaviors seem normal. Most
likely, some NxTerm resource allocation is failing silently and leaving
things in an unusable state. The board I am using has 128Mb of SDRAM
so I can't believe that memory is the limiting factor. These are,
however, RAM-backed windows and will use significant amounts of memory.
The primary issue is that the number of windows should probably be
managed in some way to assure that the end-user does not experience
odd behaviors when resource usage is high.
5. Menus with sub-menus have not been verified. There is no use of sub-
menus in the current code base so I expect that there are issues when,
for example, and item from a sub-menu item: That menu and all of its
antecedent menus should be closed.
6. There is an optional MENU button that may appear at the far left on
the toolbar. It is not used by any window in the current code base
and, hence, is unverified. I would expect some issues with generating
and routing the MENU button events to applications. There are likely
other unverified features.
7. X/Y input may be either via a touchscreen or a mouse. Only
touchscreen input has been verified. There is, however, very little
difference. The primary issue is in cursor support: Cursors are
needed with a mouse. Cursor images also change depending on the
state (like grabbing and dragging or resizing). There is also a
possibility of using auto-raise with a mouse as well. All of this
logic is in place, but none has been verified.
8. I am suspecting that NxTerm processes are not being shut down
properly when an NxTerm window is closed, but I have not yet
investigated this.
9. NxTerm windows really need to be scrollable. They are difficult to
use with only a few lines on a small display. A related usability
issue is the font height: The fonts report a maximum font height
that results in a large line spacing on the display and, hence,
fewer lines visible in the small window. This is latter issues is
a problem with the fonts not Twm4Nx, however.
Adding Twm4Nx Applications
==========================
Application Factories and the Main Menu
---------------------------------------
The original TWM supported a .twmrc in which you could describe application
programs supported on the desktop. Currently no such start-up file is
available for Twm4Nx. Rather, all applications must be added via run-time
interfaces. And overview of these interfaces is provided in this
paragraph.
Currently, there are only two applications developed for Twm4Nx: (1) An
NxTerm hosting NSH that is analogous to an XTerm hosting the Bash shell
in a Unix environment, and (2) a touchscreen calibration application.
Let's focus instead on the NxTerm application as an example because the
touchscreen calibration is a rather unusual beast.
These example applications can be found at: apps/graphics/twm4nx/apps and
apps/include/graphics/twm4nx/apps
In short, adding an application involves a "Factory Object" that is
hooked into the Main Menu. A Factory Object is an object that is used
to create other object instances. The way in which the Factory Object
is represented is purely a decision of the application developer. One
option, however, is to use the pure virtual base class IApplicationFactory
as defined in apps/include/graphics/twm4nx/iapplication.hxx. This base
class provides only a single method:
bool initialize(FAR CTwm4Nx *twm4nx);
where CTwm4Nx is the Twm4NX session instance that allows the class
implementation to interact with session specific resources. Multiple
sessions would be required, for example, if the platform supported
multiple displays.
In practice, the application factory implementation class inherits from
the following base classes:
1. IApplicationFactory. Provides the common initialize() method.
2. IApplication. Provides the information for the application's entry
in the Main Menu
3. CTwm4NxEvent. Hooks the application factory into the Twm4Nx event
notification system.
Initialization consists of instantiating the application factory instance
and calling its IApplicationFactory::initialize() method. The application
factory instance is a singleton that must persist for the life of the
session. For the NxTerm application factory, this is done in
apps/graphics/twm4nx/src/twm4nx_main.c like:
CNxTermFactory nxtermFactory;
success = nxtermFactory.initialize(twm4nx);
In addition to general initialization, the IApplicationFactory::initialize()
method must register a new entry with the main menu. You can see an
example of this in apps/graphics/twm4nx/apps/cnxterm.c:
FAR CMainMenu *cmain = twm4nx->getMainMenu();
return cmain->addApplication(this);
The argument to the CMainMenu::addApplication() method is of type
IApplication *. Remember, however, that our application implementation
class inherited from IApplication.
The IApplication pure virtual base class is also defined in
apps/include/graphics/twm4nx/iapplication.hxx. It essentially describes
what the Main Menu logic should do when the menu item is selected. It
includes these methods:
1. getName(). Provides the name string that will be shown in the
Main Menu for this selection.
2. getSubMenu(). One possibility is that selecting the Main Menu item
is that it may bring up yet another sub-menu of options.
3. getEventHandler(). Returns an instance of CTwm4NxEvent that is used
to route menu selection events. Remember that our application
factory inherits from CTwm4NxEvent so this function only needs to
return the 'this' pointer.
4. getEvent(). Provides the event ID that will be used in the event
notification. The returned value must conform to the description
in apps/include/graphics/twm4nx/twm4nx_events.hxx. In particular,
the recipient of the event must be EVENT_RECIPIENT_APP.
The Twm4Nx application is then started when the application factory's
CTwm4NxEvent::event() method is called with the specified event.
Application Windows
-------------------
How the application factory starts an application instance is purely up
to the application designer. Typically this would include starting a
new application task. General characteristics of an application include:
1. It probably should inherit from CTwm4NxEvent so that it can receive
events from the system.
2. To create the window, it must instantiate and initialize an instance
of CWindow.
3. It must configure application events to receive notifications from
Twm4Nx.
To create an application window, the application must call the
CWindowFactory::createWindow() method. For the NxTerm example, this looks
like:
NXWidgets::CNxString name("NuttShell");
uint8_t wflags = (WFLAGS_NO_MENU_BUTTON | WFLAGS_HIDDEN);
FAR CWindowFactory *factory = m_twm4nx->getWindowFactory();
m_nxtermWindow = factory->createWindow(name, &CONFIG_TWM4NX_NXTERM_ICON,
(FAR CIconMgr *)0, wflags);
The window factory is another factory that creates and manages window
instance. The createWindow() method requires four parameters:
1. The name of the window. This is the name that is show in the window
toolbar and may be the same name as was used in the Main Menu entry.
2. A reference to the the Icon image associated with the window. This
is the image that is show on the desktop when the window is
iconified. It is of type NXWidgets::SRlePaletteBitmap.
3. A pointer to the Icon Manager instance that this window belongs with.
This can be NULL to use the default Twm4Nx Icon Manager.
4. A set of flags that describe properties of the windows.
The flag values are defined byte WFLAGS_* definitions provided in
apps/include/graphics/twm4nx/cwindow.hxx:
1. WFLAGS_NO_MENU_BUTTON Omit the menu button from the toolbar
2. WFLAGS_NO_DELETE_BUTTON Omit the delete button from the toolbar
3. WFLAGS_NO_RESIZE_BUTTON Omit the resize button from the toolbar
4. WFLAGS_NO_MINIMIZE_BUTTON Omit the minimize button from the toolbar
5. WFLAGS_NO_TOOLBAR Omit the toolbar altogether
6. WFLAGS_ICONMGR This window is an icon manager
7. WFLAGS_MENU This window is a menu window
8. WFLAGS_HIDDEN Start with the window hidden
Once the CWindow is instantiated, events needed by the application can
be configured as is done in the NxTerm application:
struct SAppEvents events;
events.eventObj = (FAR void *)this;
events.redrawEvent = EVENT_NXTERM_REDRAW;
events.resizeEvent = EVENT_NXTERM_RESIZE;
events.mouseEvent = EVENT_NXTERM_XYINPUT;
events.kbdEvent = EVENT_NXTERM_KBDINPUT;
events.closeEvent = EVENT_NXTERM_CLOSE;
events.deleteEvent = EVENT_NXTERM_DELETE;
bool success = m_nxtermWindow->configureEvents(events);
Again, recall that the application inherits from CTwm4NxEvent. So passing
'this' as the event object above assures that the specific events are
routed to the application instance.
Drawing in the application window can be performed using that facilities
of NXWidgets using the NXWidgets::CGraphicsPort associated with the
window. The NxTerm application does not perform any drawing, however;
that drawing is performed by the NxTerm driver.
The NXWidgets::CGraphicsPort can be obtained from a CWindow instance,
say m_window, like:
FAR NXWidgets::CWidgetControl *control = m_window->getWidgetControl();
NXWidgets::CGraphicsPort *port = control->getGraphicsPort();
That CGraphicsPort is then passed to the widget constructor, binding the
widget to that window and forcing all widget drawing to occur within the
window.
Obviously, a lot more could be written about drawing, much more than can
be addressed in this README file.
