Hi Dan,
Here are examples of:
Windows: https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/temp/windows.png MacOS: https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/temp/macos.png Linux: https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/temp/windows.png
The link for Linux is a copy of the Windows example. Easy enough to substitute "linux" for "windows" to retrieve it.
There are some definite drawbacks to going in this direction:
- Fragmentation. For some period of time, we'll have to be generating duplicate builds and there will be confusion in the community about which one to use, which one bugs are being reported for, etc.
- Parity. It's going to take a lot of work to fully reimplement the current UI, and in all likelihood, some of the features won't get pulled into the new version. The current UI does a lot of things and I don't know what all is really useful or used by people. However, it's also a chance to start afresh and unify/polish things.
- OS support. Right now our binary builds work on Windows XP, and some really old versions of MacOS. I'm not so worried about the latter as Mac people seem to *love* to upgrade their OS on the day of the release, bugs be damned. Right now, I think we can support >= High Sierra, which is three old and from 2017. However, I think we'd probably end up breaking support for anything older than Windows 7, which might be rather unpopular.
- Drivers. This works on Python2, but I'd be generating builds with Python3 only. That means people need to chip in and help convert the problematic drivers to work with Python3. There are lots of examples of doing this in the tree, so hopefully anyone just willing to do some grunt work can help with this.
I had been using XP to do my serial port captures. Mainly because that was the OS installed on the laptop I was using and it was 32-bit so it would work with Portmon. Once I have serial port captures, I move them over to a Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit desktop (that Portmon won't work with) to continue.
That being said, I recently purchased a really cheap HP thin client and installed Windows 7 Pro 32-bit on it specifically to be able to run CHIRP and Portmon. The thin client even has a hardware serial port should I need it.
So at least I can say I am at the point now where dropping Windows XP support should not affect me.
I'd appreciate it if people could pull the relevant test build from here and load it up to see what they think:
https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/temp/
Note that the Windows build will likely only run on Windows 10, unless you have the VS2015 runtime on your system already. It also starts slow because it's packed into a single executable (that'll be better on a real build). The MacOS build should run on High Sierra or later. There are definitely some weird visual things, like dialog boxes with weird shapes, but that's just because it's all thrown together. These builds are all running python3 with no GTK.
I downloaded the Windows build. My Windows 7 desktop computer must already have the VS2015 runtime because the test CHIRP build loaded up fine.
The memory rows are numbered incorrectly and have more memory rows than the radio supports. I assume that this is not what we are looking for at this stage of the game?
I downloaded the Linux build. I had to install the python-future package to run it. When it comes up it doesn't look like the linux example. In Windows there only 2 options on the menu bar: File, Radio and Help. In the example the same menu bar options are show. On my linux computer the menu options are the same as a normal CHIRP build: File, Edit, View, Radio and Help (example attached). The Loc numbers aren't centered in the column or bold. There are also not grid lines. It is almost like some kind of hybrid has been loaded.
So, let me know what you think. Do windows-y people hate the way this looks/behaves for some reason? Is the spreadsheet-like interface less good than what we have now? Anyone have other concerns than what I mentioned above? Thoughts in general?
I currently have both the latest build and the test build showing on my Windows 7 Home computer. For the features that are available to compare on both, I think I like the test build better. I really like the grid lines. The bold column headings look nice. The tabs across the top of the memory editor have a better look. Visually, I don't have anything to complain about. The ability to past data from an external application is a welcome change.
Jim KC9HI
