One of the tools I need to add for HMI Designer is a bitmap/Image editor. A simple bitmap editor is easy to create just using an array of 32×32 positions and allow the user to set colors to them. One technique could be to allow an image to be drawn in full size and then…
Testing a new UML tool “Modelio”. This is a GPL, open source. Obviously made in and for Java. I quite like parts of the tool, but I admit that I find it a bit slow to work with yet. They have however done some clever thinking around lines in the class diagram. Rather than having…
Not so much to look at yet, but it is progressing. Testing themes here. The general idea is that you draw annotated user dialogs on a scratchpad. Should be very familiar for most GUI developers.
The table below show the basic tools I plan in the HMI Designer. This tool group is just to get us started and cover the basics that need to be in any GUI design. The list is not complete. Once this is covered we will move on to more advanced gauges and UI components. Select…
One of my concerns are visibility of data – variables. And this is one of the areas where we can take advantage of our graphic nature. As we display a diagra we can also show all variables available to that diagram at a simple tree-list at left (or right). We can also present tools to…
The diagram above is a minimum PLD function similar to classic, empty functions. The only challenge here is lack of executable details. This 2nd diagram show one way of presentaing executable details. This is key to our success, so we need to work a bit on this. This last diagram show a possible single-step debugging…
I did a few prototypes to test a graphical programming language a few years back. First one in VC++/MFC and later one in C#/.NET. What I will do next is to write blog entries discussing the syntax and wrap this up as a language specification. I called this “Plain Logic Diagram” (PLD) by accident and…
I tend to stick to a single, simple concept as I design tools regardless if this is Compiler, Assembler, HMI Designer or something else – I create a tool, a separate Repository and separate output generators as illustrated below: This means that the tools (like HMI Designer) will store it’s output in a repository database…
One of the objectives with creating a diagramming framework in Qt is to be able to create some tools that can support classic desktop look & feel and be re-deployed on Web, tablet’s & phones. I want to take advantage of some experiences from Web based technology, but as mentioned before – I develop network…
This premature screenshot shows an early version of the HMI Designer. The designer itself is quite simple, you use the menu/commands on top to create a “diagram” and the design tools at left will come up. In this case we create a HMI, but I will re-use the framework for other diagrams later. An HMI…