There are rumours that RAD Studio will soon have a Linux Platform added to 
their PC/Android/Apple Platforms.   For those who don't know, the languages 
supported are Delphi (think Skype, Altium CAD etc), and C++.  Although it's not 
a free development environment, the up side is with the click of a selection in 
a drop down menu the target can be recompiled for any of the platforms.  That 
potentially makes it possible to develop a common user interface for both local 
and remote control.  And visual interfaces are really easy to develop.

I've done some remote control applications that run on both a PC Windows 
Platform and my Android Tablet via Ethernet to DMX512A hardware.  Simple 
sliders for RGB control.

In the long run this may be a better way to develop an updated user interface 
for LinuxCNC.  But I think it's still early days.
John



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Rössler [mailto:a...@machinekoder.com]
> Sent: November-21-17 2:32 AM
> To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)
> Subject: [Emc-users] Anyone interested in QtQuickVcp support for LinuxCNC?
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I have started a new VCP project approximately 4 years ago because I was
> very dissatisfied with what was already available in LinuxCNC at the
> time.
> 
>  From a users perspective, the UIs were not usable for 3d printers and
> did
> not even come close anything visually acceptable by the post-smartphone
> era customers.
> 
>  From a developers perspective VCPs where completely outdated and not
> even close to what modern UI toolkits offer. No developer really want's
> to work with tk, we can argue about Gtk2.
> 
>  From an OEM perspective, there was no option to build a close-source UI
> on top of LinuxCNC without a lot of effort. Additionally, if the OEM
> decides to stay with Gtk2, it's not supported anymore and (almost) no
> commercial help available.
> 
> That's why I started a completely new approach for creating a VCP
> development kit based on QtQuick - which is Qt's UI development
> technology.
> 
> QtQuickVcp comes with 2 reference UIs:
> - Cetus: designed as axis replacement:
> https://github.com/qtquickvcp/Cetus
> - Machineface: a generic and full-blown 3D printer UI:
> https://github.com/qtquickvcp/Machineface
> 
> I agree both are not top notch when it comes to UI design. But with a
> little effort you can create great stuff with QtQuickVcp
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT-tAweP21U
> 
> All UIs run on Linux, Windows, OSX, Android and iOS (not in the app
> store).
> 
> To simplify remote deployment of the UIs one can simply download and run
> the "MachinekitClient" (yes, it's Machinekit only right now) and connect
> to the machine instance.
> 
> This way, it's extremely simple to circumvent the limitations of
> embedded computers with weak graphics performance. Use a cheap 100$
> tablet as your display and you are fine
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnJv07yeGt0)
> 
> To support LinuxCNC would be quite simple. The machine/server part is
> based on Machinetalk - an open source middleware.
> 
> Basically, it would be a matter of "adapting" mkwrapper, mklauncher and
> configserver (Python applications) over to LinuxCNC.
> 
> HAL Remote - which is useful for custom extensions would require more
> effort, since it depends on the haltalk server - which goes deep into
> Machinekit.
> 
>  From the user perspective, I think the split between LinuxCNC and
> Machinekit makes absolutely not sense and is very confusing. To make it
> simple: Machinekit is focused on Non-CNC and LinxuCNC on CNC.
> 
> Anyway, that's worth another discussion, but for a start it would be
> great if we could unity the UI land at least.
> 
> UI is driving factor for modern CNC and QtQuickVcp makes it possible to
> create modern UIs for LinuxCNC.
> 
> Requiring the Qt toolchain, which can be cumbersome to install, is not
> an issue anymore thanks to live coding support:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5rYhq06wio
> 
> Stay tuned: I also have tools for drag and drop UI and machine creation
> in the
> making - because I think that's what made Mach3 so successful (despite
> the motion control is crap).
> 
> Also upcoming thanks to Qt: Web Browser support:
> http://blog.qt.io/blog/2017/07/07/qt-webgl-streaming-merged/
> 
> If there is enough interest, I will start porting the required tools.
> 
> --
> Alex R�ssler aka. Machine Koder
> https://machinekoder.com
> a...@machinekoder.com
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> _______________________________________________
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