fpGUI Interface

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Introduction

fpGUI is a widgetset completely written in Object Pascal. It links directly with the underlying windowing system, and thus avoids the need for many external libraries. More information on its website: http://fpgui.sourceforge.net

Other Interfaces

• Lazarus known issues (things that will never be fixed) - A list of interface compatibility issues
• Win32/64 Interface - The winapi interface for Windows 95/98/Me/2K/XP/Vista, but not CE
• Windows CE Interface - For Pocket PC and Smartphones
• Carbon Interface - The Carbon interface for Mac OS X
• Cocoa Interface - The Cocoa interface for Mac OS X
• Qt Interface - The Qt 4 interface for Unixes, Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux-based PDAs
• GTK1 Interface - The gtk1 interface for Unixes, Mac OS X, Windows
• GTK2 Interface - The gtk2 interface for Unixes, Mac OS X, Windows
• fpGUI Interface - Based on the fpGUI library, which is a cross-platform toolkit completely written in Object Pascal
• Custom Drawn Interface - A cross-platform LCL backend written completely in Object Pascal inside Lazarus. The Lazarus interface to Android.

Platform specific Tips

• Windows Programming Tips - Desktop Windows programming tips.
• Linux Programming Tips - How to execute particular programming tasks in Linux
• OS X Programming Tips - Lazarus installation, useful tools, Unix commands, and more...
• WinCE Programming Tips - Using the telephone API, sending SMSes, and more...
• Android Programming - For Android smartphones and tablets
• iPhone/iPod development - About using Objective Pascal to develop iOS applications

Interfaces Development Articles

• Carbon interface internals - If you want to help improving the Carbon interface
• Windows CE Development Notes - For Pocket PC and Smartphones
• Adding a new interface - How to add a new widget set interface
• LCL Defines - Choosing the right options to recompile LCL
• LCL Internals - Some info about the inner workings of the LCL

Creating your first LCL application with fpGUI

This is a step-by-step guide to build your first application with the fpGUI widgetset

1. Download the latest Lazarus from subversion and build it (not necessary if you downloaded a pre-compiled snapshot)

2. Download fpGUI source code from the SourceForge.net Git repository as follows:

git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/fpgui/code

3. Now we need to make the Lazarus LCL find the fpGUI code.

Using Lazarus (trunk)

Option 1)
Copy the 'src' directory from the fpGUI sources into your Lazarus directory as follows:

  <fpgui>/src/ ⇒ <lazarus>/lcl/interfaces/fpgui/src/

Option 2)
Use your file systems's symbolic linking function to simply link the fpGUI src directory to the correct location in Lazarus.

For example:

    cd /opt/lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui
    ln -s /path/to/fpgui/src src

Using Lazarus 1.0.8 and earlier

Option 1)
Supported on all platforms. Copy two directories and one file from the downloaded fpgui to lazarus

<fpGUI dir>/src/gui ⇒ lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui/gui
<fpGUI dir>/src/corelib ⇒ lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui/corelib
<fpGUI dir>/src/VERSION_FILE.inc ⇒ lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui/VERSION_FILE.inc

Option 2)
Linux or any other Unix type platforms. Create symbolic links from the fpGUI's corelib, gui directories and VERSION_FILE.inc to the Lazarus LCL directory as follows:

ln -s <fpGUI dir>/src/gui lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui/gui
ln -s <fpGUI dir>/src/corelib lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui/corelib
ln -s <fpGUI dir>/src/VERSION_FILE.inc lazarus/lcl/interfaces/fpgui/VERSION_FILE.inc

4. Open Lazarus, open the menu Tools-->"Configure Build Lazarus", select all options to None and LCL to Build+Clean, select fpGUI widgetset and rebuild it.

5. Go to the menu Compiler Options, select fpGUI as the widgetset and you can recompile your project to fpGUI.

Implementation details

Component mapping

This is a table indication which FPGUI controls are used to build each LCL control.

NOTE: This table is incomplete and out of date. Many other controls have already been implemented in LCL-fpGUI, but not listed in this table.

LCL Control	FPGUI Control	Comments
TPageControl	TfpgPageControl	-
TButton	TfpgButton	-
TBitBtn	TfpgButton	fpGUI's standard button class supports images.
TSpeedButton	TfpgButton	fpGUI's standard button class supports images and flat look etc.

Road map for the fpGUI interface

Here: Roadmap#Widgetset dependent components