Features

The TOAD C++ GUI Library provides some standard features found in other GUI libraries like

• Model-View Architecture
• UTF-8 text encoding
• True color and color dithering on 4 to 8 bit display depths
• ISO C++ Template based Signal & Slot style callbacks
  Signal & Slots is the name of the callback technique in the Qt C++ GUI library which requires an additional preprocessor while TOAD achieves the same with C++ templates.
  Experience shows that keeping track of callbacks in complex applications is too complicated so a new idea is to introduce a central database of callbacks.

• Closures
  Well not real closures but closure alike constructs for callbacks. The current implementation uses preprocessor macros but using C++ templates by provide some advantages in the future.

• Platform independent font specification via fontconfig
  (for both X11 and FreeType fonts)

• Pluggable Layout Managers
• 2D vector graphic editor
• Postscript, PDF and SVG output (through the Cairo graphics library)
• high quality UTF-8 text rendering (through Gtks Pango library)
• Minimal HTML Viewer for Online Documentation

The following features are unique:

• Decoupled Menubar
  Methods and the menubar/toolbar are connected automatically over the window hierarchy.
  This not only simplifies the creation of menubars but also allows automatic handling of different menu styles like the single menubar under MacOS X or the typical one menubar per window under X11.

• Decoupled Undo Management
  Undo objects and undomangers/menubars are connected automatically over the window hierarchy.

• Runtime Layout Editor
  Layouts of dialogs, menubars, formlayouts, etc. can be configured at runtime.

Other planned features are, for example, a C++ scripting language to create a complete User Interface Management System (UIMS) for Rapid Prototyping.

Download

Stable Release

Stable means that the API will not change for all 0.64.x releases.

toad-0.64.1.tar.bz2 [gpg sig] (uploaded Tue, 03 July 2007 22:30:40)

Requires GNU C++ 3.0 or higher, the X Window System, libpng and fontconfig 2.2.0 or higher.

Manual

toad-manual-2004-01-31.tar.gz

Subversion

Development releases are available via Subversion:

svn checkout https://svn.mark13.org/toad/trunk/toad toad
cd toad
svn checkout https://svn.mark13.org/toad/trunk/examples examples

(Browse online)

There is also an experimental port to Mac OS X:

svn checkout https://svn.mark13.org/cocoa/trunk cocoa

(Browse online)

Other stuff

Applications, old releases and snapshots, etc.

Hello World

This program subclasses the class TMyWindow from TOAD's window class TWindow and displays it.

The command

g++ `toad-config --cxxflags --libs` hello.cc

will compile the program.

// include declarations of TOAD basic classes
#include <toad.hh>
 
// use the TOAD namespace
using namespace toad;
 
// define a new window class, based on TWindow
class TMyWindow:
  public TWindow
{
  public:
    // typical constructor for windows
    TMyWindow(TWindow *parent, const string &title)
      :TWindow(parent, title) {}
    
    // define a new method to paint the windows content
    void paint() {
      // create a pen for this window and use it to...
      TPen pen(this);
      // ...draw a text at position (50, 50)
      pen.drawString(50, 50, "Hello World!!!");
    }
};
 
// initialize TOAD, create window and enter the message loop
int
main(int argc, char **argv, char **envv)
{
  // initialize TOAD library
  toad::initialize(argc, argv, envv);
 
  // create window
  TMyWindow *window = new TMyWindow(0, "Hello World");
 
  // show window and handle user input until window is closed
  toad::mainLoop();
  
  // the window has been closed so we dispose of the object
  delete window;
 
  // clean up TOAD
  toad::terminate();
 
  return 0;
}

Dialog Editor

The dialog editor is integrated into the library and can be used at runtime.

This was done because most ideas on how to fine tune the layout of a program come when one actually uses the program.

Step 1: Write the Code

#include <toad/toad.hh>
#include <toad/dialog.hh>
#include <toad/textfield.hh>
#include <toad/pushbutton.hh>
 
class TMyWindow:
  public TDialog
{
  public:
    TMyWindow(TWindow *parent, const string &title);
 
    void printData();
 
    // the data we're going to edit
    TTextModel name, surname;
    TUnsignedModel age;
};
  
int
main(int argc, char **argv, char **envv)
{
  toad::initialize(argc, argv, envv);
  {
    // tell TOAD where to store/read the resource files
    TOADBase::setResourcePrefix("file://resource/");   
    TMyWindow(NULL, "MyWindow");
    // start the application
    toad::mainLoop();
  }
  toad::terminate();
  return 0;
}
 
TMyWindow::TMyWindow(TWindow *parent, const string &title):
  TDialog(parent, title)
{
  // create the widgets
  TTextField *tf;
  tf = new TTextField(this, "name", &name);
  tf = new TTextField(this, "surname", &surname);
  tf = new TTextField(this, "age", &age);
 
  TPushButton *pb;
  pb = new TPushButton(this, "print");
  CONNECT(pb->;sigActivate, this, printData);
  pb = new TPushButton(this, "quit");
  CONNECT(pb->sigActivate, this, closeRequest);
  
  // set a resource name for the layout
  doLayout("MyWindow");
}  
 
void
TMyWindow::printData()
{
  // print the data                                
  cout << "Name   : " << name << endl                    
       << "Surname: " << surname << endl                    
       << "Age    : " << age << endl;                    
}

Step 2: Execute your program

make
./program --layout-editor

When no earlier layout exists all the widgets are placed in the upper left corner of the window.

Step 3: Layout your widgets

Enable the layout editor and use the mouse to move and resize the widgets. You can even add additional graphical elements.

The dialog editor used here is names "TDialogLayout", which is the default for dialog windows. But one can easily use other layout algorithms, for example TSpringLayout.

Step 4: Fin

Once the layout is finished you can save the layout.