[Tfug] Poor man's GUI

[Freeman, Don]

Sorry, it's not clear to me what the end game is here. How do the new
settings get sent to the application? What form of config file does the
"little application" want to see? Can you run it with command line options?
Do you need to save a text file with old and new settings? Seems like it
would be easy enough to scan the controls on the webpage and save whatever
you need into a text file or xml, etc.

- Don 

-----Original Message-----
From: tfug [mailto:tfug-bounces at tfug.org] On Behalf Of Bexley Hall
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2014 2:46 PM
To: Tucson Free Unix Group
Subject: [Tfug] Poor man's GUI

Hi,

I've got a little application that has a metric buttload of configuration
options that are required to drive it (by comparison, GCC's command line
options are a big yawn!).

I would like to be able to throw together a "dialog" to allow the user to
quickly/easily/CONFIDENTLY pick the options he's interested in.  And,
"somehow" convey those choices to the application.

Did I mention *lots* of options?  Obviously, they have to be presented in
groups just to keep the cognitive loading within reason.  And, ideally,
annotate each option with something descriptive instead of cryptic
abbreviations that assume the user is already expert in the application's
use!

And, I'd like to come up with a portable solution so I don't have to
recreate the user interface for each platform.  Nor rely on some bloated
"graphic library".

ISTM, that I should be able to make a little interactive "web page"
to present everything.  Just use standard HTML widgets (text, listboxes,
check boxes, etc.).  So, the "web page" would be largely portable (in the
sense that any browser would display it in roughly the same way).  The
browser would handle the implementation of the GUI widgets without me having
to write any event handlers (onclick, mouseup, etc.)

But, IF I DON'T WANT TO BACK THIS WITH ANY JAVA (because that forces the
browser to have Java installed), how can I present the "completed form" to
the application ("Click 'Submit' to run the application")?
I.e., there's no server hiding behind it (that would be an even bigger
requirement than requiring Java).

One possible idea that comes to mind, if the user opts to "save as"
the web page, will the current states of all widgets be saved in the target
file?

I.e., if the file I present (with options set to some default state) is
called Input.html, after the user has messed with the options and saved it
as Output.html, will the two files *differ*?  And, will they differ in a
meaningful way that *encodes* the changes he's made to the "form"?

(Yes, I realize different browsers "save as" in different target formats;
assume I can parse these)

This seems like it would be a cheap way to get a "GUI front end"
with very little work...

Thx,
--don

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