Development : : RapaGUI 1.0 - introducing the killer plugin!
Posted By: softwarefailure. on 2016/5/15 16:00:33
This is the game changer you've been waiting for! Airsoft Softwair is proud to present its most ambitious Hollywood plugin yet: RapaGUI - a cross-platform GUI toolkit that allows the creation of native (!) GUIs for AmigaOS (MUI), Windows, Linux (GTK), and Mac OS based systems! This is a real killer plugin and truly a world's first because RapaGUI is the first cross-platform GUI toolkit to support Amiga-based systems with MUI as well. This is surely a dream come true for many Amiga users! In fact, RapaGUI is a MUI Royale spin-off with the killer app twist. Like in MUI Royale, GUI layouts in RapaGUI are conveniently defined in XML files which are then converted into full-blown GUIs by RapaGUI on-the-fly. It just doesn't get any easier

RapaGUI 1.0 - introducing the killer plugin!
Rapid Cross-Platform GUI Development On All Islands

MUI Royale and RapaGUI are very similar in their design. Thus, porting scripts from one to another is not much of an effort. A detailed migration guide from MUI Royale to RapaGUI is included in the RapaGUI manual. Note that for Amiga-only apps MUI Royale is still the number one choice because it allows you to access almost all of MUI's features whereas RapaGUI's focus is on full portability which is why its API represents the lowest common denominator between the Amiga, Windows, Linux and Mac OS GUI toolkits. All MUI fans will be happy to see that RapaGUI's API was heavily inspired by the MUI API so that you can now use the world-famous MUI API to write GUIs for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS as well!

RapaGUI uses an object-oriented design composed of over 40 MOAI (Magic Omnigui Architecture Interface) classes. Those MOAI classes constitute the heart of RapaGUI. All GUI elements supported by RapaGUI (windows, widgets, menu bars...) are simply objects derived from those MOAI classes. By wrapping the diverse native OS GUI APIs into platform-independent MOAI classes, those classes reduce the many faces of the different OS GUI APIs into just a single MOAI API face, carved in stone by RapaGUI!

RapaGUI supports all the widgets you need to create modern GUI applications, including multi-column listviews, treeviews, tabbed page widgets, toolbars, status bars, text editor widgets, menu bars, HTML views and much more. The highlight of RapaGUI, however, is certainly its inbuilt Hollywood MOAI class. This class allows dynamic embedding of complete Hollywood displays into GUIs which can be used to combine Hollywood's powerful multimedia functionality with RapaGUI's GUI abilities into one powerful application.

RapaGUI comes with almost 300 pages of documentation in various formats like PDF, HTML, AmigaGuide, and CHM that describes the GUI programming basics in detail and provides a convenient MOAI function and class reference. A step-by-step tutorial that guides you to your first RapaGUI program is also included. On top of that, almost 20 example scripts are included in the distribution archive, including advanced scripts like a complete video player which really show off the power of Hollywood and RapaGUI working together.

All this makes RapaGUI the ultimate cross-platform GUI toolkit, carefully crafted for you sailors of the seven GUI seas! Only RapaGUI allows rapid cross-platform GUI development on all islands - it is the ultimate fusion of all the different OS GUI toolkits into one MOAI face, carved in stone for eternity and beyond.

RapaGUI is the fourth plugin to bear the Powered by Hollywood 6.0 seal of quality as it utilizes the new display adapter plugin interface introduced with Hollywood 6.0. That's why we here at Airsoft Softwair say: Life starts at 6.0. Since RapaGUI requires a few enhancements introduced in Hollywood 6.1, you need at least Hollywood 6.1 to use RapaGUI. RapaGUI is available free of charge and can be downloaded from the official Hollywood portal. Versions for AmigaOS 3, AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, AROS, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux are provided. AmigaOS users please do note that although RapaGUI is still compatible with MUI 3.8, it is highly recommended to install MUI 4.0 to use all of RapaGUI's features.

This release was brought to you by Airsoft Softwair - the hardest working men in code business.

RapaGUI 1.0 - introducing the killer plugin! RapaGUI 1.0 - introducing the killer plugin! RapaGUI 1.0 - introducing the killer plugin!
RapaGUI 1.0 - introducing the killer plugin! RapaGUI 1.0 - introducing the killer plugin! RapaGUI 1.0 - introducing the killer plugin!
RapaGUI 1.0 - introducing the killer plugin! RapaGUI 1.0 - introducing the killer plugin! RapaGUI 1.0 - introducing the killer plugin!
 
  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    Intuition
    Joined: 2013/5/24
    Posts: 1110
    From: Nederland
    Very nice news indeed!

    I look forward to playing with it when I have some free time.

    Thanks for your continued hard work. :)
    1.67GHz 15" PowerBook G4, 1GB RAM, 128MB Radeon 9700M Pro, 64GB SSD, MorphOS 3.15

    2.7GHz DP G5, 4GB RAM, 512MB Radeon X1950 Pro, 500GB SSHD, MorphOS 3.9
  • »2016/5/15 16:44
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    Intuition
    Joined: 2013/5/24
    Posts: 1110
    From: Nederland
    Are there any plans for this plugin to support Android in the future?
    1.67GHz 15" PowerBook G4, 1GB RAM, 128MB Radeon 9700M Pro, 64GB SSD, MorphOS 3.15

    2.7GHz DP G5, 4GB RAM, 512MB Radeon X1950 Pro, 500GB SSHD, MorphOS 3.9
  • »2016/5/15 17:18
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  • jPV
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    jPV
    Joined: 2003/2/24
    Posts: 2026
    From: po-RNO
    Very cool, have to try some day when I've first finished my first learning program for Hollywood :) It's great to have this possibility to create programs for other platforms too just by using MorphOS. I really like the idea. And if I'd bring any new programs from other platforms to MorphOS, even better.

    Although plugin's name could be better ;) Rapa means "mud" in Finnish and it's commonly used term in spoken language to call something crap around here.. for example if you made some bad code, you could say you made "rapa" :P
  • »2016/5/15 18:08
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  • Caterpillar
    Caterpillar
    softwarefailure
    Joined: 2011/4/24
    Posts: 26
    From:
    Sorry, but I don't know Finnish. The name is a pun on Rapa Nui and even more puns with MOAI and MUI etc :)
  • »2016/5/15 21:15
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Zylesea
    Joined: 2003/6/4
    Posts: 2053
    From:
    This is a real great thing. I am very impressed and was only dreaming of something like that in my wildest dreams. This is extremly cool!

    Quote:

    Are there any plans for this plugin to support Android in the future?

    I rather doubt that since GUI design in Android is pretty different to the other systems.
    --
    http://via.bckrs.de

    Whenever you're sad just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.
    ...and Matthias , my friend - RIP
  • »2016/5/15 22:09
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    ausPPC
    Joined: 2007/8/6
    Posts: 543
    From: Pending...
    When a stand-alone executable is created, is RapaGUI compiled into it? To ask the same question another way, is it still converting XML data to a GUI layout or is a specific GUI compiled into the executable?
    PPC assembly ain't so bad... ;)
  • »2016/5/15 22:58
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    Yasu
    Joined: 2012/3/22
    Posts: 1724
    From: Stockholm, Sweden
    Impressive work, as always!
    AMIGA FORUM - Hela Sveriges Amigatidning!
    AMIGA FORUM - Sweden's Amiga Magazine!

    My MorphOS blog
  • »2016/5/17 16:42
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  • Caterpillar
    Caterpillar
    softwarefailure
    Joined: 2011/4/24
    Posts: 26
    From:
    @ausPPC: It is still converting XML data to a GUI layout when creating a stand-alone executable but your source code is converted into platform-independent bytecode first which makes it quite difficult to reverse engineer your software.
  • »2016/5/21 12:27
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Templario
    Joined: 2012/4/28
    Posts: 532
    From:
    Thanks Andreas for this new plugin!
  • »2016/5/21 19:00
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