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WYSIWYG editor for Rainmeter - RainDesigner Project

General topics related to Rainmeter.
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balala
Rainmeter Sage
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Joined: October 11th, 2010, 6:27 pm
Location: Gheorgheni, Romania

Re: WYSIWYG editor for Rainmeter - RainDesigner Project

Post by balala »

RexVine wrote:I think it's a great idea in general, not to mention getting new users interested. It looks awesome, I can't wait to try it out. I'm sure this project has taken countless hours, keep up the hard work!
Right, I also would like to see how does it work. Especially that I can't imagine how this tool will handle some details. To mention just one single question, how will it decide if the meters should have to be positioned relatively or absolutely? But there also are a lot of other questions, too. So, I'm also extremely curious...
enderep12
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Joined: November 15th, 2018, 2:47 pm

Re: WYSIWYG editor for Rainmeter - RainDesigner Project

Post by enderep12 »

Yes please! If you ever want to provide a beta version, sign me up for that :D
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Yincognito
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Re: WYSIWYG editor for Rainmeter - RainDesigner Project

Post by Yincognito »

Ha! I just saw this, and my first thought was: you stole my idea, LMAO. Seriously, I've been thinking about such a visual designer for Rainmeter as well, but some of jsmorley's points are spot on, and they crossed my mind as well, so I quickly abandoned such a monumental task.

Thing is, this, while a great idea, won't ever be "complete" in terms of features compared to a manual skin design. There are a lot of visual programming tools (e.g. Visual Studio, etc.) nowadays, but even they can't replace the need to manually write your own code - which defeats the whole purpose of a (complete) visual design tool. What this could be useful at would be to speed up and help with positioning stuff in your skin, what happens when you click on an element, stuff that most visual designer tools are able to do. The code needed for something to happen, now that's a different story, and it has to be done manually, to take advantage of the full array of Rainmeter capabilities.

Another thing that would be smart to do, in order to both make the designer adaptable and to simplify your work a lot, is to make it highly modular (i.e. "script-able"). In other words, you just need to create the platform, and let users to add modules/scripts for standard/basic things like weather measures, certain shapes, certain plugin usage scenarios, etc. That being said...Rainmeter is already such a tool (that you can add on small bits of code), so you'd basically do a Rainmeter... for Rainmeter, if this makes sense. :D

My advice is not necessarily to give up, but start with the basics: positioning, mouse events, resizing, etc. - what a Windows form would do. Create just the base, and design it with modularity in mind, so that other users can add on features in time, in the form of "add-ons". Don't try to make everything - this is next to impossible. Even Rainmeter started just with a few basic stuff in the beginning, and added and refined more over the years... ;-)
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LGP123
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Re: WYSIWYG editor for Rainmeter - RainDesigner Project

Post by LGP123 »

Eww I just saw this, really took my interest. I can't help but look forward to see how it would be. Still, I agree with Yincognito and some others on the point that there are too many special cases where I hardly see how a program could handle hit well. Yet, I find the idea/approach very interesting and finally it really could be a lot better than manual editing for skin designing. It would of course also help novices at creating skin, to make their own an easier way. Good luck on your project :thumbup: .
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Jeff
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Re: WYSIWYG editor for Rainmeter - RainDesigner Project

Post by Jeff »

I see you ended up making it onto Steam
[Link removed by admin]
I guess they never miss, huh?

I appreciate the 3D layer thing, since D2D is just a wrapper around D3D, I hope Rainmeter will get that as well soon, but until then, god speed
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jsmorley
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Re: WYSIWYG editor for Rainmeter - RainDesigner Project

Post by jsmorley »

There will be NO discussions of, or links to, commercial software on these forums....

Feel free to take this discussion to Steam, or Reddit, or Discord, or wherever you like, but it won't be here.
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