XPCE: the SWI-Prolog native GUI library
Together with SWI-Prolog, the XPCE library is now licensed under the LGPL,
making it suitable for the generation of non-free software without a special
license.
The
The XPCE online reference manual both provides access
to most of the material from the XPCE manual tools started by
manpce/0, but also is an example of using XPCE as a web-server.
What is XPCE?
XPCE is a toolkit for developing graphical applications in Prolog and
other interactive and dynamically typed languages. XPCE follows a rather
unique approach of for developing GUI applications, which we will try
to summarise using the points below.
- Add object layer to Prolog
-
XPCE's kernel is a object-oriented engine that allows for the definition
of methods in multiple languages. The built-in graphics are
defined in C for speed as well as to define the platform-independence
layer. Applications, as well as some application-oriented libraries
are defined as XPCE-classes with their methods defined in Prolog.
Prolog-defined methods can receive arguments in native Prolog data,
native Prolog data may be associated with XPCE instance-variables and
XPCE errors are (selectively) mapped to Prolog exceptions. These
features make XPCE a natural extension to your Prolog program.
- High level of abstraction
- XPCE's graphical layer provides
a high abstraction level, hiding details on event-handling,
redraw-management and layout management from the application programmer,
while still providing access to the primitives to deal with exceptional
cases.
- Exploit rapid Prolog development cycle
-
Your XPCE classes are defined in Prolog and the methods run naturally
in Prolog. This implies you can easily cross the border between your
application and the GUI-code inside the tracer. It also implies you
can modify source-code and recompile while your application is running.
- Platform independent programs
-
XPCE/Prolog code is fully platform-independent, making it feasible to
develop on your platform of choice and deliver on the platform of choice
of your users. As SWI-Prolog saved-states are manchine-independent,
applications can be delivered as a saved-state. Such states can be
executed transparently using the development-environment to facilitate
debugging or the runtime emulator for better speed and space-efficiency.
Links about motivation and impressions
There is a seperate mailinglist for XPCE specific issues. To post
to the XPCE mailing list, send mail to xpce-users@science.uva.nl. Only
registered users can post to this address. You can register to the
XPCE mailing list by sending a plaintext mail to majordomo@science.uva.nl
with the following body
The XPCE mailing list is powered by Majordomo, which is controlled
entirely using E-mail messages to majordomo@science.uva.nl. To get
help, send a message to this address with a body that only contains
the word help.
For starters as well as for more experienced users who want
to know how particular tasks are tackled using XPCE/Prolog, there is the
XPCE UserGuide. This LaTeX maintained document is available as an online
HTML document here. It is also available as PDF and
HTML-tar-archive from the SWI-Prolog download page.
The reference documentation is available using a hypertext system
defined in XPCE/Prolog. This tool exploits the XPCE-class descriptions
as well as associated hypertext cards to provide various viewpoints and
search mechanisms for browsing the reference material. The manual tools
are started using the Prolog command manpce/0:
Finally, the development tools and libraries form a rich set of
examples. Just browse through them and then use the Visual Hierarchy
Tool to locate the relevant source-code.
On Unix installations, the manpages xpce.1 and
xpce-client.1 provide documentation on the command-line options
of these commands.
The form below exploits Ht/Dig to search the SWI-Prolog
site. The index is updated every sunday.
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