Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

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iw7dmh
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Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby iw7dmh » Wed Jul 29, 2020 5:24 pm

Hello,

don't blame me if I am doing a dumb question, but I would like to better understand how the Thetis/PowerSDR GUI is implemented.
It seems all the controls in the main form (console.cs) inherit from basic controls and those are implemented in the <controlClass>ts.cs files, while almost the rest of the other forms use the VisualStudio basic controls.
So I am wondering if it is possible to implement a less flexible GUI but with controls aggregated in a different way possibly giving more space to the panadapter. In addition, some kind of dockable/removable panels would be a nice improvement.
Also, I would like to know what is the minimum set of code required to start an rtx such as a 7000 DLE.

Of course, a link to other posts or documents that talk about the same argument, are welcome as well.

73' Enzo
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby w-u-2-o » Wed Jul 29, 2020 6:58 pm

I can't speak to the code (I am not a software developer), but functionally what you suggest already exists. Simply select "Collapse" on the main menu. Then, when in Collapse display mode, experiment with the options on the "Display Controls" menu.
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby iw7dmh » Wed Jul 29, 2020 7:21 pm

HI Scott,

thank you very much for your answer.
Maybe you can help me for another issue about the second receiver. Is there a way to have the second panadapter in a separate window?
Probably I am missing something else.

73' Enzo
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby w-u-2-o » Wed Jul 29, 2020 7:24 pm

There is no way to do that at present.
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby W1AEX » Wed Jul 29, 2020 9:16 pm

Hi Enzo,

Scott covered this pretty well already, but a couple of weeks ago I started playing around with some of the un-docked panels available with the collapsed mode "Andromeda" interface and really liked it. With the limited real estate of my little 22" monitor I can't fit everything I want to display, but I have been running with the layout in the screenshot and like it very much. Just something different to play with. ;)

73, Rob W1AEX

Image
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby iw7dmh » Thu Jul 30, 2020 6:48 am

Hi Bob,
thank you very much for your hint. It is actually what I had in mind.
I read about the Thetis skin features on your web site and I am wondering if the new Andromeda GUI controls will be "skinnable" as well.
Also, I can't find any download for the 2.7.0 release.
Can you give me any other hints?

Best 73'
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby laurencebarker » Thu Jul 30, 2020 6:46 pm

Hi Enzo

I'm not desperately familiar with the "skinning" process but I think it involves replacing the controls with bitmap files that would have fixed text on them. I don't see that working for Andromeda.

Why? Well, the labels on the upper display that I've added for Andromeda are just pieces of text. The button bar buttons could in principle have bitmap files instead - but the button text changes when you change the controls or change menus. There are currently I think 7 button menus; that actually means the same 8 buttons, but with the text changed depending on which menu is selected. Users can create their own menus in an editor, so the number could be a lot more that that! And the button text changes depending on the current setting of the control and whether it's currently controlling RX1 or RX2. A button that changes RX attenuation, for example, will also show the current attenuation. You would need a lot of bitmaps to be able to do that!
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby W1AEX » Fri Jul 31, 2020 1:46 am

Enzo,

Follow the update directions written by Richie (MW0LGE) in the very first post of the Thetis forum at the link below. Richie has provided download links for the official version of 2.6.9 and also the zip archive file pack that moves it to the 2.7.0 version by overwriting 6 of the files of your installed 2.6.9 version:

https://apache-labs.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3345

73, Rob W1AEX
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby iw7dmh » Fri Jul 31, 2020 12:03 pm

Thank you Laurence and thank you Rob.
I'll try to go more in depth with the code. I would like to understand how the GUI event listeners are invoked and how the GUI sends commands to the underline WDSP engine. I already found the Thread system that updates the GUI but inspecting a class with more that 65.000 rows of code is a bit of pain :)
Actually I am not a fan of the "very customizable" GUIs used in the beginning of 2000. I much prefer the new trend started with the Andromeda console. Simple controls work plain and fast and do not force the OS to heavy reapainting tasks.
I am wondering what will be the effort to refactor the whole main window but, most likely, this will be another question :D

73' Enzo
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby laurencebarker » Fri Jul 31, 2020 1:33 pm

Doug has reminded me that the Andromeda forms are skinnable. For example the band or mode select forms. So the skin treatment could be used there.
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby laurencebarker » Fri Jul 31, 2020 1:37 pm

Doug has reminded me that the Andromeda forms are skinnable. For example the band or mode select forms. So the skin treatment could be used there.
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby iw7dmh » Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:57 pm

Ok Laurence this make sense.

Looking at the initial picture I was assuming the interface would be simplified.
Does it means the controls in Andromeda forms can have the same skin like the ones in the main interface? For example like the RUN buttons; MON, TUN and so on. (sorry for my bad English)

73'
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby W1AEX » Fri Jul 31, 2020 7:43 pm

I believe we would need to know the file names in the skin associated with the various panels that can be displayed in the Andromeda display mode. Once that is known it is very simple to create and then add the console panel pieces to duplicate what is shown in the rest of the GUI skin. I glanced at a few of the default skins but did not come across any that I recognized as new.

73, Rob W1AEX
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Re: Thetis/PSDR development philosophy

Postby W3MMR » Wed Aug 12, 2020 9:26 pm

W1AEX wrote:Hi Enzo,

Scott covered this pretty well already, but a couple of weeks ago I started playing around with some of the un-docked panels available with the collapsed mode "Andromeda" interface and really liked it. With the limited real estate of my little 22" monitor I can't fit everything I want to display, but I have been running with the layout in the screenshot and like it very much. Just something different to play with. ;)

73, Rob W1AEX

Image



Rob,
Is there any way to undock the top controls? Also, if we can figure out how to change the "skins" of the andromeda windows, and fonts of them...

And man oh man, when are we going to get some proprietary remoting software for the anan?


Perry

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