Writing UI code can be quite repetitive and tiresome. While working on our latest project for the pebble smartwatch we created (read: hacked!) a tool that eased some of the burdens by generating C source from a simple formatting language.
This line of a pview script
text $passed_text as 'text_line2' (width:60 height:17 top:6 left:22) using font 'my_custom_font' black on clear;
corresponds to the following C code
// text layer 'text_line2'
{
current->text_line2 = text_layer_create( (GRect){ .origin = { 6, 22 }, .size = { 60, 17 } } );
Layer *layer = text_layer_get_layer( current->text_line2 );
text_layer_set_font( current->text_line2, current->my_custom_font );
text_layer_set_text( current->text_line2, passed_text );
text_layer_set_background_color( current->text_line2, GColorClear );
text_layer_set_text_color( current->text_line2, GColorBlack );
layer_add_child( parent, layer );
}We organize our code into views and subviews. Views are basically containers for a group of closely related interface components. As the other pebble user interface components, views will expose at least a *_create, *_delete and *_get_layer function.
Every view has to be defined in an seperate pview file.
Running the pgenview command against our script will generate a a_simple_demo_view.h header and an a_simple_demo_view.c implementation file in the current working directory. Any existing files by that name will be overwritten.
The header file of the example above will expose the following interface for you to extend
//
// this is a generated file, do not edit!
//
#ifndef a_simple_demo_view_h
#define a_simple_demo_view_h
#include <pebble.h>
struct AReference;
typedef struct ASimpleDemoView {
Layer *container;
TextLayer *text_line1;
TextLayer *text_line2;
BitmapLayer *some_image;
GBitmap *bitmap_some_image;
GFont my_custom_font;
GFont font_gothic_24;
struct AReference *my_referenced_view;
} ASimpleDemoView;
Layer * a_simple_demo_view_get_layer( ASimpleDemoView * view );
ASimpleDemoView * a_simple_demo_view_create( char * passed_text, void * some_data );
void a_simple_demo_view_destroy( ASimpleDemoView *current );
#endifFor a detailed documentation of the pview script syntax please have a look at our wiki.
You can install pgenview via npm npm install -g pgenview
In the support directory you will find syntax highlighting support for textmate and sublime text as well as the source files for our pebble font manager.
We used Zaach Carters jison to create the parser for our generator. You can find the jison source file in the src/ directory. If you want to customize the generated code you should have a look at the mustache template files.
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2014 hmmh AG
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