GuiLite: Small, cute GUI effects you can reuse

241 points by zorro_young 6 years ago on hackernews | 48 comments

shruubi | 6 years ago

why do I care that this is "cute"? I want a cute puppy, not my software to be cute. If your product has novelty animations, stupid colours or uses emoji's in any way I want nothing to do with that childish bullshit.

If you are actually searching for tiny GUI library that can run on embedded devices and additionally supports Micropython bindings, check out https://littlevgl.com/ .

tyhoff | 6 years ago

I’m also intrigued by Qt for MCU’s. It looks very promising and the toolset to compliment the library is likely better than anything else for the embedded space.

https://www.qt.io/qt-for-mcus

I really wish we had open-sourced the UI framework we built for the Pebble firmware.

rhn_mk1 | 6 years ago

What's the obstacle for making the Pebble framework open now that Pebble is gone?

sjburt | 6 years ago

Fitbit bought the company and presumably the IP (what else is there to buy?) so it would be up to them.

girvo | 6 years ago

I wish you had too! The Pebble Round was still my all time favourite gadget, and I loved the UI that had been built

thebruce87m | 6 years ago

LittleVGL is MIT licensed.

QT is GPL and LGPLv3.

QT for MCUs is proprietary

pjmlp | 6 years ago

BSD vs GNU/Linux market share.

thebruce87m | 6 years ago

You’re going to have to dumb that one down for me, if you care to explain.

My comment on the license was from an embedded perspective - if you do a bare metal product I believe adhering to *GPL becomes difficult since you have to proved the ability to update QT. Sure, there are ways to allow this but it’s not straight forward.

I’m not sure why I got downvoted for my previous comment - I mean, I just posted the license types.

nine_k | 6 years ago

LGPL does not prevent you from using the library in a closed-source product, and recompile your software with a newer version of the library.

It only makes a difference if you alter the library. If you plan a proprietary fork, LGPL is not for you.

akiselev | 6 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong but all of that only applies to LGPL if you dynamically link the libraries and it doesn't apply to GPL proper at all.

When people say "embedded" they usually mean devices that run on low end bare metal hardware without an operating system (or even a memory controller!), which means nothing to provide dynamic linking, let alone the kind of end user control that the GPL philosophy is meany to promote. The vast majority of embedded software is statically linked by design so even the permissive parts of the LGPL don't apply.

elcritch | 6 years ago

No the LGPL has a clause for dealing with static linking [1]. It's more difficult to do (as the comment above us mentions).

Using static linking requires you to provide program object files which can be relinked (and re-uploaded I'd presume). This allows the user to modify the LGPL file, and then relink the original program to the updated version.

1: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html

shandor | 6 years ago

Qt for MCUs is definitely interesting, but I wonder if they are able to go quite as low resource-wise as these other lite-graphics libraries (like Littlevgl mentioned in another comment).

TFA boasts RAM usage of 9kb. That's something you can run on almost a literal potato, and I'd be frankly astonished if Qt devs have been able to go as low.

On the other hand, you can build a somewhat nice system with graphics already with a Cortex-M4 and 512 kb of RAM. That sounds something that Qt just might be able to reach, which would be quite awesome.

solarkraft | 6 years ago

Could you share some details about the Pebble's UI framework and the general firmware (assuming Fitbit doesn't care that much)?

OT Aside, but important to me: I was super excited about the Pebble Time and with it being marketed a "geek watch" expected a super open device I could program with custom haptics, use the microphone, get replacement parts etc and was super disappointed when I discovered none of this was possible.

(Bonus aside: If you found yourself agreeing you might be interested in Rebble and the Pine Time)

mysterydip | 6 years ago

Thanks for this! I've been using ncurses, this will look 100x better.

dcoupl | 6 years ago

Did anyone notice the demo for "Animation" on the demo wall of the Git repo README? Lol and WTF

jldugger | 6 years ago

I don't think I'm qualified to comment further on how it might piss someone off without pissing someone else off, but: It's a trans... former.

bdcravens | 6 years ago

Well, the logo is stylized after PornHub

nirui | 6 years ago

Yeah somebody made a "PornHub Style Logo Generator": https://github.com/kasuganosoras/logo-maker (You can also found many of them online as well)

I guess that's where the logo was generated.

ocdtrekkie | 6 years ago

Probably a poor choice for a demo. Shouldn't be using any demo material which would cause you to pay more attention to the content than the tech.

imhoguy | 6 years ago

This reminds me discussion of recent post about Lilith OS https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21861057

jcahill | 6 years ago

That's just your brain on HN misery mode, where all earthly concerns bow in vague allegiance to business logic that may not even exist.

It's also wrong in principle: memorable demos remain the most culturally-significant standalone things associated with tech since the 1960s.

akiselev | 6 years ago

Those memorable demos were called things like "The Mother of all Demos" not "Cute things [...]"

jcahill | 6 years ago

Superficially 'bad' demos also work like this.

Getting people talking about your stuff because they're motivated enough to have a pineapple-on-pizza type of argument over the demo is canny and bigtechs do this deliberately.

"Did anyone notice <demo>? LOL and WTF" is why we're communicating now.

johnlorentzson | 6 years ago

There's quite a bit of engrish on that page. That combined with the logo doesn't really give a good first impression. That aside, it looks pretty interesting.

girvo | 6 years ago

There’s quite a few libraries by amazing Chinese developers out there with lacking English documentation, but I can at least speak for swoole and say the code is usually fantastic and worth reading through. Hell, these days I barely trust actual docs anyway

fermienrico | 6 years ago

I love RamTeX: https://www.ramtex.dk/

Ultra minimal, designed by greybeards. No bullshit, just UI. It's amazing. If you want to build super fast, responsive and pleasure to use embedded devices, look into RamTeX library. It is not free, but its cheap. I've talked to them a few times, they're super cool people.

rational_indian | 6 years ago

404

jeffadotio | 6 years ago

I am guessing that the logo was generated from a website that mimics well-known logos. This is probably the best argument against using such a logo. I kept wondering why the creator wanted this to be associated with adult content.

bdcravens | 6 years ago

Well at least one of the demo is NSFWish so perhaps that was intentional.

nirui | 6 years ago

The logo situation is basically an aftermath of a joke in the Chinese programmer circle: Somebody made a PornHub logo generator out of probably their own boredom, and others got "inspired" by it and say, "They, I can do that too with even crapper code", "They I can try out that Vue/React/[Insert whatever front-end buzz word here] on this quick 'side-project'".

After that, you end up with many of crappy logo generators posted on the Internet.

Few month later: "HELP!!! I'm building a new project and I needed a logo. But I don't know how to design one".

Then here you go.

oefrha | 6 years ago

Well as a sibling comment of yours pointed out, it’s basically the original YouTube logo (used for more than a decade with slight variations) which predates PornHub. I’m sure YouTube isn’t the originator either as it’s not really that creative.

That some people associate the style with adult content probably says more about themselves than the style.

jeffadotio | 6 years ago

> That some people associate the style with adult content probably says more about themselves than the style.

The logo is in active use and that makes it confusing. I have no interest in making moral judgments of adult content or strangers who may or may not consume it. Doing so is unproductive and off-topic.

skrebbel | 6 years ago

That, or it's on purpose and considered funny? FWIW I think it's quite witty.

[Deleted] | 6 years ago

<p>[Empty / deleted comment]</p>

slavik81 | 6 years ago

Isn't it basically just the old YouTube logo? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_of_YouTube_(2015-201...

herman_toothrot | 6 years ago

Did it get changed? I don't see any adult content related logo.

StavrosK | 6 years ago

It looks like the PornHub logo, I believe that's what the GP was referring to.

Skunkleton | 6 years ago

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

StavrosK | 6 years ago

Indeed there's not, apart from the slight tackiness of your logo looking like another logo. I don't see why it's more objectionable than looking like the YouTube logo, say.

[Deleted] | 6 years ago

<p>[Empty / deleted comment]</p>

adamnemecek | 6 years ago

Can anyone recommend a good widget layout implementation?

samatman | 6 years ago

Ah, but is it pronounced Gooy-lite, or Guil-ite, like a mineral?

marvy | 6 years ago

This time I think its the first one :)

jshevek | 6 years ago

ducktective | 6 years ago

buserror | 6 years ago

I used Nuklear for a couple of project that needed a little bit of UI, it's pretty neat to add some UI to an OpenGL or similar project. It's more targeted at "game UIs" and the like tho, where the UI isn't the main component..

rkagerer | 6 years ago

It'd be nice if you could zoom in on that Demo wall on mobile (I couldn't on Chrome on Android).

ozbonus | 6 years ago

Try zooming in on something outside of the table and then scrolling to it. Worked for me with the same setup.