GUI Scripting

[friskydrifter]

Couldnt think of anything better for the title.

I Have been messing with AutoIT http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/ on 'doze machines - pretty cool stuff.

Anyone know of anything like that for linux? Like I dont need to make a GUI but to manipulate them, send keystrokes etc.

[jro]

Check out Gambas: http://gambas.sourceforge.net/

Its alot like Visual Basic for windows, but you can create your GUI then 'attach' other scripts/programs to GUI actions. I wrote a couple of real basic gui's then attached shell scripts to a couple of button clicks. It will give your programs a gui very quickly as everything is drag-n-drop

[wildman]

KDE Kommander may be what your looking for, and there may be something similar for Gnome/GTK+...
http://hektor.umcs.lublin.pl/~mikosm...roduction.html
http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdewebdev/kommander/
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=12865

Here are some notes on linux tools for scripting 'Dialogs' you may find useful...

There is a unix scripting user-feedback utility called 'dialog' (man -k dialog), which is curses based and does not run well in a gui env. Each desktop env has developed it's own version of dialog or contains the programming tools to do it. For Xwindows, it was called 'Xdialog', for KDE 'Kdialog', Gnome uses 'GnomeDialog' library functions in the powerful GTK+ toolkit (similar to Tcl/Tk). Here are some links on how to make user feedback dialog window widgets pretty & functional... without spawning terminals that can go awry.

Improve Bash Shell Scripts Using Dialog - Linux Journal
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2460
Advance Bash Scripting - Shell Wrappers - LoggingWrapper
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/wra...LOGGINGWRAPPER

xdialog - A Python wrapper for the Xdialog - Chris Arndt Python Software
http://www.chrisarndt.de/en/software/python/

KDE - Kdialog
http://developer.kde.org/documentati...dialog/t1.html
kdialog dialog types - message box - progress dialog
http://developer.kde.org/documentati...ialog/x85.html

GNOME Programming in Linux using GTK+ LG #70 - Dialog boxes
http://linuxgazette.net/issue70/ghos...Dialog%20boxes
http://www.linuxheadquarters.com/how...g/dialog.shtml
http://linuxheadquarters.com/howto/p...w/window.shtml
GTK+ Gnome Application Development - User Communication Dialogs
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/cha-dialogs.html
Making application programming easy with GNOME libraries - developerWorks
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-gnome3/
Sawfish and the Gnome Run Application dialog
http://linux.seindal.dk/item48.html

[comtux]

There is also ruby.

Ruby Example.
#!/usr/bin/env ruby

print "Enter your name: "
name = gets
print "Hello, #{name}"


<b>Ruby Gtk2 Example<b>
#!/usr/bin/ruby

# This initializes our library
require 'gtk2'


def hello( widget )
puts "Hello World"
end

def delete_event( widget, event )

# If you return false in the "delete_event" signal handler,
# GTK will emit the "destroy" signal. Returning true means
# that you don't want the window to be destroyed.
# This is useful for popping up 'are you sure you want to quit?'
# type dialogs.
puts "delete event occurred."

# Change true to false and the main window will be destroyed with
# a "delete_event".
return true
end

# Another callback
def destroy( widget )
Gtk.main_quit
end

# This is called in all Ruby-GNOME2 applications.
Gtk.init

# Create a new window.
window = Gtk::Window.new( Gtk::Window::TOPLEVEL )

# Sets the window title.
window.set_title( "helloworld.rb" )

# Sets the border width of the window.
window.set_border_width( 10 )

# When the window is given the "delete_event" signal (this is given
# by the window manager, usually by the "close" option, or on the
# titlebar), we ask it to call the delete_event method
# as defined above. The data passed to the callback
# method is nil and is ignored in the callback method.
window.signal_connect( "delete_event" ) {
delete_event( nil, nil )
}

# Here we connect the "destroy" event to a signal handler.
# This event occurs when we call Gtk::Widget#destroy on the window,
# or if we return false in the "delete_event" callback.
window.signal_connect( "destroy" ) {
destroy( nil )
}

# Creates a new button with the label "Hello World".
button = Gtk::Button.new( "Hello World" )

# When the button receives the "clicked" signal, it will call the
# method hello, passing it nil as the argument. The hello
# method is defined above.
button.signal_connect( "clicked" ) {
hello( nil )
}

# This packs the button into the window( a Gtk::Container )
window.add( button )

# The final step is to display the newly created widget
button.show

# And the window
window.show

# All Ruby-GNOME2 applications must have a Gtk.main. Control ends here
# and waits for an event to occur ( like a key press or mouse event ).
Gtk.main