Brief Introduction to mGNCS

• Introduction of the New Control Set

• Content Organization of This Guide

Introduction of the New Control Set

In the development of miniStudio, in order to realize the design of visual graphic interface, based on MiniGUI existing interfaces, FMSoft developed a new control set. The new control set introduced by miniStudio is developed on the foundation of the original MiniGUI control set. In order to distinguish it from MiniGUI intrinsic control set, it is referred to as “new control set (mGNCS in short)”.

Features of the new control set are as follows:

• Object-oriented programming idea is adopted to rearrange the inheritance relations between the controls. C language is used to realize concepts similar to C++ class, and C language interface is provided externally. In this respect, the new control set introduced by miniStudio is similar to the control set of Gtk+.

• Interfaces and styles of the controls are standardized, enabling all controls to access with uniform interface.

• Based on MiniGUI 3.0 look and feel renderer, the concept of look and feel renderer is further expanded. Each control in the new control set has its own look and feel renderer and exclusive renderer interface of each control is defined according to the inheritance rule of the controls, enabling them to change along with the changes of controls.

• Through developing the new control set, we settle the deficiencies of MiniGUI intrinsic control set in the following aspects simultaneously.

• The interfaces are not uniform and standardized;

• Operating controls through messages, it is difficult to maintain codes and easy to make mistakes;

• Hierarchical relation of intrinsic control is unclear, there are many repeated codes, and it is inconvenient to customize and extend control functions;

• Drawing efficiency of the intrinsic control is low, and twinkling problem is serious when running on the development board.

In the new control set, there exist the following classes:

• Control class. This class is used to represent all kinds of controls (such as main window, static box, button and list box etc.), which are the classes with visualized feature in MiniGUI applications. It needs to be noted that the concept of “control” stated in mGNCS has broader extension than that of the “control” stated by MiniGUI, which includes objects such as the main window etc. simultaneously. While the control referred to by MiniGUI is only used for child window. In mGNCS, all the control classes are derived from mWidget class.

• Non control class. This class is used to maintain class hierarchical structure and data used by the controls etc., which includes the following kinds:

• Super class, it is the most foundational class in mGNCS class hierarchical structure, and all other classes are derived from this class, which is mObject class.

• General class, this class is used to realize mechanisms such as data source and data binding etc., and it is also used to maintain the data used by the controls, such as mItem class.

• Invisible component class, this class is used to represent the invisible components used in the interface such as timer etc., which is collectively referred to as component class together with control class (equivalent to visible component class).

A control is composed of the following parts:

• Object and class: mGNCS uses an object structure and class structure to represent a class. The class structure mainly defines a group of function pointers to simulate virtual function table of C++ class, so as to realize the inheritance and multi-status capability. While object structure defines a data structure related to class case.

• Control class name: A unique character string identifies a control class, and corresponding C language macro uses NCSCTRL_ as the prefix.

• Control style: same as the style concept of MiniGUI intrinsic control set. In the new control set, style is only used in the properties that can be determined at control initialization and will not change in the whole life cycle of the control.

• Control property: the new control set can extract the features that can be controlled through control through get/set method and set an integer identifier for each item, and accesses and controls the behavior and status of a control through setProperty and getProperty method of the class structure.

• Control event: the concept of message and notification code in MiniGUI are combined, and event of control can be responded through setting the callback function of a specific event.

• Look and feel renderer: in mGNCS, drawing of each control is realized by special look and feel renderer. The new control set provides classic, fashion, skin and flat look and feel renderers by default. Control can choose any one valid renderer and adjust the look and feel of the control through setting specific properties (such as color and size etc.) for the renderer. For the convenience of description, the look and feel renderers stated in this guide are referred to as renderer. In order to distinguish from the renderers of the control itself, renderers defined by MiniGUI 3.0 are referred to as “global renderer”, and renderers introduced by the new control set are referred to as “control renderer”. Effects of the two kinds of renderers have the following differences:

• Global renderer acts on the main window, MiniGUI intrinsic control set and system components of the new control set (such as non client area elements such as border, title bar, and scroll bar etc.).

• Control renderer only acts on the client area drawing of each control of the new control set.

In addition, the invisible components defined by the new control set have interfaces similar to that of control class. At present, timer is realized, in the later edition, the components planned to realize are special effect switching component and program logic control component etc.

The new control set is mainly used in cooperation with miniStudio and can also be directly used as a component of MiniGUI 3.0, and it can be used in mixture with the controls in the intrinsic control set.

Content Organization of This Guide

This guide is divided into the following appendixes:

• Part 1: It introduces the basic concept and system structure of mGNCS.

• Part 2: facing application developers, it states how to use mGNCS to develop applications and describes the main API interface in detail.

• Part 3: facing the developers of the new control set, it states how to develop new controls and renderers etc. for mGNCS.

• Appendix: Compiling Norm for This Document and Content of Other Rapid References etc.

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