March 19, 2005
The FLTK distribution contains over 60 sample applications written
in or ported to FLTK. If the FLTK archive you received does not
contain a 'test' directory, you can download the complete FLTK
distribution from
http://fltk.org/software.php.
Most of the example programs were created while testing a group of widgets.
They are not meant to be great achievements in clean C++ programming, but merely
a test platform to verify the functionality of the FLTK library.
adjuster shows a nifty little widget for quickly
setting values in a great range.
The arc demo explains how to derive your own widget to
generate some custom drawings. The sample drawings use the matrix
based arc drawing for some fun effects.
ask shows some of FLTK's standard dialog boxes, but you
may end up in a loop, but you may end up in a loop, but... .
This simple test shows the use of a single color bitmap as a
label for a box widget. Bitmaps are stored in the X11 '.bmp'
file format and can be part of the source code.
boxtype gives an overview of readily available boxes and
frames in FLTK. More types can be added by the user. When using
themes, FLTK shuffles boxtypes around to give an app a new look.
browser shows the capabilities of the Fl_Browser widget.
Important features tested are loading of files, line formatting, and
correct positioning of the browser data window.
The button test is a very simple demo of buttons and callbacks.
buttons shows a sample of FLTK button types.
Written by Steve Poulsen in early 1979, checkers shows
how to polish a VT100 text terminal based program into a neat
program with a graphical UI. Check out the code that drags the
pieces, and how the pieces are drawn by layering. Then tell me
how to beat this program.
The clock demo shows two analog clocks. The innards of
teh Fl_Clock widget are pretty interesting as they explain
the use of timeouts and matrix based drawing.
colbrowser runs only on X11 systems. It reads
/usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt to show the color representation
of every text entry in the file. This is beautiful, but
only mederatly useful unless your UI is written in Motif.
The color_chooser gives a short demo of FLTK's palette based
color chooser and of the RGB based color wheel.
The cube demo shows the speed of OpenGL. It also tests
the ability to render two OpenGL buffers into a single window,
and shows OpenGL text.
CubeView shows how to create a UI containing OpenGL with fluid.
The cursor demo show all mouse cursor shapes that come standard
with FLTK. The fgcolor and bgcolor sliders work only
on few systems like Irix.
curve draws a nice Bezier curve into a custom widget. The
points option for splines is not supported on all platforms.
This tool allows quick access to all programs in the test directory.
demo is viaully based on the IrixGL demo program and cna be
extended by editing test/demo.menu.
The doublebuffer demo show the difference between a single
buffered window, which may flicker during a slow redraw, and a
double buffered window, which never flickers, but uses twice the
amount of RAM. Some modern OS's double buffer all windows automatically
to allow transparency and shadows on the desktop. FLTK is smart enough
to not tripple buffer a window in that case.
FLTK has two very different text input widgets. Fl_Input
and derived classes are rather leight weight, however
Fl_Text_Editor is a complete port of nedit (with permission).
The editor test is almost a full application, showing custom
syntax highlighting and dialog creation.
fast_slow shows how an application can use then when()
setting to receive different kinds of callbacks.
The standard FLTK file_chooser is the result of many
iterations, trying to find a middle ground between a complex
browser and a fast light implementation.
fonts show all available text fonts on the host system.
If your machine still has some pixmap based fonts, the supported
sizes will be shown in bold face. Only the first 256 fonts will
be listed.
forms is an XForms program with very few changes.
Search for "fltk" to find all changes necessary to port to fltk.
This demo show the different boxtypes. Note that some
boxtypes are not appropriate for some objects.
fractals shows how to mix OpenGL, Glut and FLTK code.
FLTK supports a rather large subset of Glut, so that many Glut
application compile just fine.
This demo shows how to do many of the window manipulations that
are popular on SGI programs, even though X does not really like
them. You can toggle the border on/off, change the visual to
switch between single/double buffer, and make the window take
over the screen. More information in the source code.
gl_overlay shows OpenGL overlay plane rendering. If no
hardware overly plane is available, FLTK will simulate it
automatically.
The glpuzzle test dhows how most Glut source code compiles
easily under FLTK.
hello: Hello, World. Need I say maore? Well, maybe. This
tiny demo shows how little is needed to get a functioning application
running with FLTK. Quite impressive, I'd say.
help displays the built-in FLTK help browser. The
Fl_Help_Dialog understands a subset of html and renders
various image formats. It is a great help to provide help
pages to the user without depending on the operating system's
html browser.
iconize demonstrates the efeect of the window functions
hide(), iconize(), and show().
The image demo shows how an image can be created on the fly.
This generated image contains an alpha (transparency) channel which
lets previous renderings 'shine through', either via true
transparency or by using screen door transparency (pixelation).
inactive tests the correct rendering of inactive widgets.
To see the inactive version of images, you can check the pixmap
or image test.
This tool shows and tests differnet types of text input fields based on
Fl_Input_. The input program also tests various
settings of Fl_Input::when().
input_choice tests the latest addition to FLTK1, a text input
field with an attached pulldown menu. Windows users will recognize
similarities to the 'ComboBox'. input_choice starts up in
'plastic' scheme, but the traditional scheme is also supported.
FLTK unifies keyboard events for all platforms. The keyboard
test can be used to check the return values of Fl::event_key()
and Fl::event_text(). It is also great to see the modifier
buttons and the scroll wheel at work. Quit this application by closing
the window. The ESC key will not work.
Every FLTK widget can have a label attached to it. The label
demo shows alignment, clipping and wrapping of text labels. Labels
can contain symbols at the start and end of the text, like @FLTK
or @circle uh-huh @square.
Advanced line drawing can be tested with line_style.
Not all platforms support all line styles.
This little app finds all available pixel formats for the current X11
screen. But since you are now an FLTK user, you don't have to worry
about any of this.
mandelbrot shows two advanced topics in one test. It creates
grayscale images on the fly, updating them via the idle callback
system. This is one of the few occasions where the idle callback
is very useful by giving all available processor time to the application
without blocking the UI or other apps.
The menubar tests many aspects of FLTK's popup menu system.
Among the features are radio buttons, menus taller than the screen,
arbitrary sub menu depth, and global shortcuts.
message pops up a few of FLTK's standars message boxes.
The minimum test program verifies that the update regions
are set correctly. In a real life application, the trail would
be avoided by choosing a smaller label or by setting label clipping.
correctly.
navigation demonstrates how the text cursor moves from
text field to text field by using the arrow keys, tab and shift-tab..
output shows the difference between the single line and
multi line mode of the Fl_Output widget. Fonts can be
selected from the FLTK standard list of fonts.
The overlay test app show how easy an FLTK window can
be layered to display cursor and manipulator style elemnts. This
example derives a new class from Fl_Overly_WIndow and
provides a new function to draw custom overlays.
The pack test program demonstrates the resizing
and repositioning of children of the Fl_Pack group.
Putting an Fl_Pack into an Fl_Scroll is
a useful way to create a kind of browser.
pixmap_browser tests the shared image interface. When using
the same image multiple times Fl_Shared_Image will keep it
only once in memory.
This simple test shows the use of a LUT based pixmap as a
label for a box widget. Pixmaps are stored in the X11 '.xpm'
file format and can be part of the source code. Pixmaps support
one transparent color.
I do have my preferences in the morning, but sometimes I
just can't remember a thing. This is where the Fl_Preferences
come in handy. The remember any kind of data between program launches.
The radio tool was created entirely with fluid. It
shows some of the available btton types and tests radio
button behavior.
resizebox shows some possible ways of FLTK's automatic
resize bahavior..
The resize demo tests size and position functions with
the given window manager.
scroll shows how to scroll an area of widgets, one of
them beeing a slow custom drawing. Fl_Scroll uses
clipping and smart window area copying to improve redraw speed.
The buttons at the bottom of the window test decoration rendering
and updates.
shape is a very minimal demo that shows how to create
your own OpenGL rendering widget. Now that you know that, go ahead
and write that flight simulator you always dreamt of.
The subwindow demo tests messaging and drawing between
the main window and 'true' sub windows. A sub window is differnt
to a group by resetting the FLTK coordinate stystem to 0, 0 in the
top left corner. On Win32 and X11, subwindows have their own
operating system specific handle.
symbols are a speciality of FLTK. These little vector
drawings can be integrated into labels. They scale and rotate,
and with a little patience, you can define your own. The rotation
number refers to 45 degree rotations if you were looking at a
numeric keypad (2 is down, 6 is right, etc.).
The tabs tool was created with fluid. It tests
correct hiding and redisplaying of tabs, navigation across tabs,
resize behavior, and no unneeded redrawing of invisible widgets.
FLTK can be used in a multithreading environment. There are some
limitations, mostly due to the underlying operating system.
threads show how to use Fl::lock(),
Fl::unlock(), and Fl::awake() in secondary threads
to keep FLTK happy. Although locking works on all platforms,
this demo is not available on every machine.
The tile tool shows a nice way of using Fl_Tile.
To test correct resizing of subwindows, the widget for region
1 is created from an Fl_Window class.
The tiled_image demo uses an image as the background
for a window by repeating it over the full size of the widget.
Thw window is resizable and shows how the image gets repeated.
valuators shows all of FLTK's nifty widgets to change
numeric values.
fuid is not only a big test program, but also a very
useful visual UI designer. Many parts of fluid were
created using fluid.