Hello all,

I have been learning Processing in the past couple of weeks.  I found that I wanted to make changes to the values of variables to see the effect on my program.  I was keeping these values in constants, but it was time consuming to close the applet, modify the constant, and then restart the applet.  I wanted to see the effects of manipulating variables instantly.

To solve this, I wrote a package that is very simple to use to change the values of variables on the fly.  All you have to do is include the package, name the variables you want access to with a prefix, and include a call a static method in the draw method.  OMenu reads the code, extracts the appropriate variables based on the name, and gives you an interface to modify those variables.

Unfortunately, it will not run in the applet.  I am using reflection to get a list of all the variables in the PApplet.  This seems to work fine when I run through the IDE, but when I run the exported applet in a browser, I see lots of access violations.  I assume it’s the security settings of Applet.  In any case, I find this tool invaluable for development.

Please send me any suggestions or comments.  I threw up a webpage with instructions on how to use the package as well as the .jar file and the source code at  http://mythmar.homelinux.com/proapplet .  Everything is still a little rough, which is fine for my usage, but if people are interested, I'll try to clean up the interface and package.  Also, please let me know if you have any suggestions or comments.

-Omar

Thanks.  I want to make it into a full menuing package.  I haven't seen one out there for Processing.

Of course to do this, I will need to solve the Applet access issue.  I was discussing it with a coworker, and he suggested that I would have to sign the applet.  This will probably mean signing the applet that Processing outputs.  Has anyone attempted to do this before?  Any luck?

-Omar

A separate window is a good idea.  It could be really powerful.

I tried to make the Jar file as MVC as possible.  I wasn't as consistent as I intended though.

If you want to create a new presentation, the class ODisplay will be the place to do it.  Currently, ODisplay gets the PApplet and asks it to draw the text on itself.  If you wanted a separate window, you could just create some kind of Swing or Applet window and throw your information in there.  At that point, you could probably include real Java components (sliders, text boxes, radio boxes for Booleans, etc) to adjust your variables.

Doing that does exaggerate the issue of not being able to run in a browser though.

I'm guessing the same approach the controlP5 library requires for applets might work for you.  

Apparently, if every function and variable is declared "public" at the root scope, your library might have better luck introspecting them in the applet security level.

Hope that helps,
-jd