This is a tool for creating minimal graphical user interfaces; maybe just a splash screen and an indicator icon with a drop-down menu.
The tool is inspired by dialog and other similar command-line
utilities which provide drop-in user interfaces for shell scripts.
GUI-o-Matic is also a drop-in UI, but it differs from these tools in that it is meant to be used as long-running process, either communicating with a background process (a worker) or providing access to URLs or shell commands.
Background worker processes can mutate GUI-o-Matic's state using a simple JSON-based protocol, and the GUI can communicate back or perform actions based on user input in numerous ways. Background workers that need richer user interfaces than are provided by GUI-o-Matic itself are expected to expose web- or terminal interfaces which GUI-o-Matic can launch as necessary.
When used without a worker, GUI-o-Matic can provide easy point-and-click access to shell commands or URLs (see example scripts).
Initally written as part of Mailpile, this app is released separately so other projects can make use of it.
This project is a work in progress. Please feel free to help out!
The license is the GNU LGPL which means it can be used and distributed along with proprietary applications, but changes to GUI-o-Matic itself must be shared with the community.
GUI-o-Matic currently supports the following desktop environments:
- Ubuntu Unity
- MacOS X (partial)
- Standard X11 (partial via pygtk)
Ideally, future versions will add complete support for:
- Microsoft Windows
- GNOME / GTK3
- KDE
If you have experience developing user interface code on any of these platforms, please consider helping out!
GUI-o-Matic currently allows creation of the following UI elements:
- Splash screen with progress bar and status
- Simple main window with graphics, buttons and status messages
- Indicator with mutable icon and drop-down menu
When the user interacts with the GUI (clicks a button or a menu item), the following actions can be triggered:
- Open URLs in the user's browser
- Launch apps in terminal windows
- Make HTTP GET/POST requests in the background (REST API calls?)
- Run shell commands in the background
Planned features:
- Dock icon with mutable icon and custom menu
- System notifications (growl-style)
The UI feature-set is deliberately meant to stay small, to increase the odds that the full functionality can be made available on all platforms.
When used as a command-line tool, the gui-o-matic tool will read a
JSON formatted configuration from standard-input, until it encounters
the words OK GO or OK LISTEN on a line by themselves.
In GO mode, the app will continue running until killed.
In LISTEN mode, the app will then continue reading standard input, expecting one command per line. On EOF the app will terminate. The command format is very simple; a command-name followed by a space and a single JSON structure for arguments. Examples:
update_splash_screen {"progress": 0.2, "message": "Yaaay"}
set_item {"id": "frobnicator", "label": "FROB IT"}
notify_user {"message": "Hello World!"}
Consult the file PROTOCOL.md for a full specification of the program and a full list of available commands. The scripts folder contains working examples illustrating these concepts.
Copyright 2016-2018, Mailpile ehf. and Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson.
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.