Creating Your Own GUI from Ground-up

Siam

Hey everyone!

I'm currently interested in putting together my own GUI, or at the very least a window on the left/right side of the screen that I could put things into. I am currently playing on a tiny netbook so the available GUI from the mudlet forums doesn't mesh well with my screen. So, ideally, here's what I want to do:

The GUI I want to put together would basically act like a small window where I could put reminders in, kind of like a chatbox, except instead of copying and pasting directly the game's text, I want it to work like so:

It fires off a line:
Siam hands you potatoes. 

The code then ideally would update the GUI and place this at the bottom of the window:
Siam gave us POTATOES!

I am a bad coder(and the few coding attempts I did from reading the mudlet manual and the mudlet forums ended in semi-disasters, the closest I got to was creating a left oriented column spanning the entire height of the screen, but the 'updates' I placed there were stuck in the middle of the screen instead of the desired chatbox-like behavior) I am revisiting the prospect of creating this GUI and I would like you coding savvy folks' help in approaching the desired outcome. Thank you!

Ciaran

You want to look either at geyser miniconsoles or just regular miniconsoles.  They display text similarly to how it is displayed in the main output window.

An example is: 

function window_setup()

setBorderLeft(300) -- moving the main output over 300 px

-- determine the size of your screen

local WindowWidth

local WindowHeight

WindowWidth, WindowHeight = getMainWindowSize()

createMiniConsole("my_feed", 0,0,0,0)

resizeWindow("my_feed", 300,WindowHeight) -- 300 px wide, fits to screen vertically

setBackgroundColor("my_feed",0,0,0,255) -- black

setWindowWrap( "my_feed", 40) -- wrap lines in window "focus" at 40 characters per line

setMiniConsoleFontSize("my_feed", 10)

end

Then you can echo things there with:

echo("my_feed", "blah")

or

cecho("my_feed", "blah")

etc.

Siam

Thanks! I've been fiddling around and I'll keep this in mind.