Re: [MiNT] Generic tool

[Peter Slegg <p.slegg@scubadivers.co.uk>]

On Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:34:42 , Miro Kropacek <miro.kropacek@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I've worked with some very, very large complicated ones so yousort of get
> > used to it, especially with nice tools like oXygen.
> >
> > I'd keep this one quite simple and they wouldn't be very big unless you
> > set one up for gcc :-)
> >
> I still miss some 'kick-ass' use case... unix tools should be run from unix
> environment (to see the output, to have the ability of using pipes etc) and
> the rest doesn't need this xml approach. If you convince me / us it's really
> really needed and useful, your chances to get the implementation one day
> will raise :)

The xml is just to auto-configure the dialogue box rather than having
to make a custom one for each and every tool that a user wants to use.

The idea is that anyone could spend a few minutes reading the man pages
for a tool, edit an xml and have a nice(ish) gui tool for running that
application. The output would still go to a window as now. The xml would
allow a file selector to be called to add input/output files as needed.

There are almost no gui tools for setting up Mint or using the stuff that
has been ported to Mint.


Example: jpegtran

This is the --help output

Switches (names may be abbreviated):
  -copy none     Copy no extra markers from source file
  -copy comments Copy only comment markers (default)
  -copy all      Copy all extra markers
  -optimize      Optimize Huffman table (smaller file, but slow compression)
  -progressive   Create progressive JPEG file
Switches for modifying the image:
  -crop WxH+X+Y  Crop to a rectangular subarea
  -grayscale     Reduce to grayscale (omit color data)
  -flip [horizontal¦vertical]  Mirror image (left-right or top-bottom)
  -perfect       Fail if there is non-transformable edge blocks
  -rotate [90¦180¦270]         Rotate image (degrees clockwise)
  -scale M/N     Scale output image by fraction M/N, eg, 1/8
  -transpose     Transpose image
  -transverse    Transverse transpose image
  -trim          Drop non-transformable edge blocks
Switches for advanced users:
  -restart N     Set restart interval in rows, or in blocks with B
  -maxmemory N   Maximum memory to use (in kbytes)
  -outfile name  Specify name for output file
  -verbose  or  -debug   Emit debug output
Switches for wizards:
  -arithmetic    Use arithmetic coding
  -scans file    Create multi-scan JPEG per script file

Using this, a user could set-up a quick xml file containing the
items they think are useful, they might choose to keep it simple
and just add some check boxes for crop, flip, rotate and
scale (with an input field), then add a fileselector so that they
can work on any file.

Running the tool generates a dialogue box on the fly and submits the
command with options and files, that the user selects at runtime, to the os.

The user can start working without a lot of tedious command line
editing. The xml file is saved for later use and could easily
be extended by anyone to add other features.

Peter