开云体育

ctrl + shift + ? for shortcuts
© 2025 开云体育
  1. Linuxham
  2. Topics

FLdigi graphical face lift

 

I’ve been wondering how hard it would be to give FLDigi a graphical facelift.

I know the look of FLDigi doesn’t affect its usage, power, or capability. But in an era of dark mode, themes, and modern design, I’ve heard comments like, “FLDigi is one of those old programs...” or even, “It’s on its way out...”—and I think it’s purely because of how it looks.

In reality, w1hkj and the team update, enhance, and improve the program regularly. I love FLDigi, use it nearly daily, and teach others why it should be every ham’s number one tool, in their digital tool box.

But hearing these comments makes me think a maybe a facelift could help change that perception.?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.
 

Almost everything colorful can be changed in the configuration dialog. I always change my U/I to a darker look.
?
If some FT8 person doesn't see the value in using FLDIGI, I doubt some pretty pictures are going to bring them around.?
 

开云体育

Hi Greg,

The look of fldigi comes from the underlying widget technology - FLTK. At the moment this does not have a dark theme. The UPS of FLTK is that it is fast and light (hence the FL part of the name), so does not waste a lot of CPU and GPU processing rendering fancy looks. It is also highly portable and graphics rendering is one aspect where different OSs and indeed different windows managers require specific code making this requirement a lot more difficult to hide from the application developer.

That said, I also use FLTK as the technology for my personal logging program and have implemented a kind of dark mode where I have changed the default foreground and background colours, but it was by no sense a trivial mod as I had hard-coded colours instead of using the default ones in a number of places. Also I found light text on a dark background more difficult to read at my age, so I don't often use it in dark mode.

As to introducing fancy styles of drawing the individual widgets, this will be more difficult to retro-fit into existing code.

It would not be impossible, but it would require a lot of effort for minimum gain.

73 Phil GM3ZZA

?

From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Greg Cheng - KC3SMW via groups.io <kc3smw@...>
Sent: 21 January 2025 1:42 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: [linuxham] FLdigi graphical face lift
?

I’ve been wondering how hard it would be to give FLDigi a graphical facelift.

I know the look of FLDigi doesn’t affect its usage, power, or capability. But in an era of dark mode, themes, and modern design, I’ve heard comments like, “FLDigi is one of those old programs...” or even, “It’s on its way out...”—and I think it’s purely because of how it looks.

In reality, w1hkj and the team update, enhance, and improve the program regularly. I love FLDigi, use it nearly daily, and teach others why it should be every ham’s number one tool, in their digital tool box.

But hearing these comments makes me think a maybe a facelift could help change that perception.?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.
 

Sorry for my English.
I think that the appearance should be modest, the interface is very intuitive and all this so that the program is fast and the processor burdens little.
For me, this speed and convenience of use counts.
Also "I love" Fldigi :)

Jurek, sp3rat


W dniu 21.01.2025 o?14:42, Greg Cheng - KC3SMW via groups.io pisze:


I’ve been wondering how hard it would be to give FLDigi a graphical facelift.

I know the look of FLDigi doesn’t affect its usage, power, or capability. But in an era of dark mode, themes, and modern design, I’ve heard comments like, /“FLDigi is one of those old programs...”/ or even, /“It’s on its way out...”/—and I think it’s purely because of how it looks.

In reality, w1hkj and the team update, enhance, and improve the program regularly. I love FLDigi, use it nearly daily, and teach others why it should be every ham’s number one tool, in their digital tool box.

But hearing these comments makes me think a maybe a facelift could help change that perception.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.
--
Pomó? Wojtusiowi w walce z autyzmem: KRS 0000252666. Cel szczegó?owy: Wojciech Karg
 

At my age, I find most dark modes either hilariously garish / painful or so subdued I cannot tell where one title bar ends and the other begins - they're all the same color of "dark." All of the FT-mode software falls under that umbrella. The only "dark" mode I have found remotely useful is Breeze Twilight on my Mint box using KDE.

While not "infinitely configurable," you can come up with a "dark" mode in Fldigi:
?

Regards,
Joel - W4JBB
 

That really depends on what you define as "dark mode".? Alternate color renderings for the user interface seems to be highly dependent on the operating system and the user selected desktop experience.

fldigi etal are designed to execute natively on: Windows XP -> 11, all versions of Linux, several versions of Unix, all versions of MacOS.? The UI for all of the applications use the Fast Light Tool Kit, .
It is possible to change nearly all of the colors (but not with a single button click) for each.? For example
image.png
One possible "dark mode" scheme that you can set up and save in flrig.
Each individual application has to be coded to allow this degree of color rendering.? The current alpha code for flrig is complete.? So too is fldigi:
image.png
C++ developers are welcome to work on the other applications to create similar configurable UI color schemes.

73, David
W1HKJ


On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 7:42?AM Greg Cheng - KC3SMW via <kc3smw=[email protected]> wrote:

I’ve been wondering how hard it would be to give FLDigi a graphical facelift.

I know the look of FLDigi doesn’t affect its usage, power, or capability. But in an era of dark mode, themes, and modern design, I’ve heard comments like, “FLDigi is one of those old programs...” or even, “It’s on its way out...”—and I think it’s purely because of how it looks.

In reality, w1hkj and the team update, enhance, and improve the program regularly. I love FLDigi, use it nearly daily, and teach others why it should be every ham’s number one tool, in their digital tool box.

But hearing these comments makes me think a maybe a facelift could help change that perception.?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.
 

Not a bad idea to modernize the UI (but not ruin it), Dave might have some suggestions, but someone with the coding skills will likely need to do the work :-)
?
- Lonney
?
On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 04:42 AM, Greg Cheng - KC3SMW wrote:

I’d love to hear your thoughts.
 

NOTHING WRONG WITH OLD.! Long live W1HKJ! I hope he has many kids, all radio hams. 73 Bo W4GHV for SEVENTY YEARS?
 

Indeed.

One of the main attractions of Fldigi (and companions) is the simple and clean UI.

As a result everything works well on lower capacity hardware, and works very well indeed.? Even on a little Acer One, that only has an Intel Atom CPU.? Not exactly a computing powerhouse, but is great for portable use.? (Even the more complex MFSK modes work well.)

Please don't go down the bloatware route!? Just because someone thinks things "Look Old".

Newer is not always better.

73.

Dave G0WBX.
 

Absolutely agree.

Gayland
KG7GCF


On Wed, Jan 22, 2025 at 10:05?AM Dave, G?WBX via <g8kbvdave=[email protected]> wrote:
Indeed.

One of the main attractions of Fldigi (and companions) is the simple and clean UI.

As a result everything works well on lower capacity hardware, and works very well indeed.? Even on a little Acer One, that only has an Intel Atom CPU.? Not exactly a computing powerhouse, but is great for portable use.? (Even the more complex MFSK modes work well.)

Please don't go down the bloatware route!? Just because someone thinks things "Look Old".

Newer is not always better.

73.

Dave G0WBX.
 

Absolutely agree, too.
sp3rat

W dniu 22.01.2025 o?19:04, Dave, G?WBX via groups.io pisze:

Indeed.

One of the main attractions of Fldigi (and companions) is the simple and clean UI.

As a result everything works well on lower capacity hardware, and works very well indeed.? Even on a little Acer One, that only has an Intel Atom CPU.? Not exactly a computing powerhouse, but is great for portable use.? (Even the more complex MFSK modes work well.)

Please don't go down the bloatware route!? Just because someone thinks things "Look Old".

Newer is not always better.

73.

Dave G0WBX.



--
Pomó? Wojtusiowi w walce z autyzmem: KRS 0000252666. Cel szczegó?owy: Wojciech Karg
 

I agree 100% !!! Please don't change anything, it's SO GOOD and simple! :)

Any change in UX is always upsetting users. (I was upset about the settings and configuration menu changes, now everything is more complicated than before)




On Wed, Jan 22, 2025 at 7:05?PM Dave, G?WBX via <g8kbvdave=[email protected]> wrote:
Indeed.

One of the main attractions of Fldigi (and companions) is the simple and clean UI.

As a result everything works well on lower capacity hardware, and works very well indeed.? Even on a little Acer One, that only has an Intel Atom CPU.? Not exactly a computing powerhouse, but is great for portable use.? (Even the more complex MFSK modes work well.)

Please don't go down the bloatware route!? Just because someone thinks things "Look Old".

Newer is not always better.

73.

Dave G0WBX.





--

73 DE IW9HGS
 

WTheyS 100% bloatware jolly interfaces are nice but could tip the specification?outside small computers like the Pi.

Dave G0CER

On Wed, 22 Jan 2025 at 21:58, Asbesto, IW9HGS via <iw9hgs=[email protected]> wrote:
I agree 100% !!! Please don't change anything, it's SO GOOD and simple! :)

Any change in UX is always upsetting users. (I was upset about the settings and configuration menu changes, now everything is more complicated than before)




On Wed, Jan 22, 2025 at 7:05?PM Dave, G?WBX via <g8kbvdave=[email protected]> wrote:
Indeed.

One of the main attractions of Fldigi (and companions) is the simple and clean UI.

As a result everything works well on lower capacity hardware, and works very well indeed.? Even on a little Acer One, that only has an Intel Atom CPU.? Not exactly a computing powerhouse, but is great for portable use.? (Even the more complex MFSK modes work well.)

Please don't go down the bloatware route!? Just because someone thinks things "Look Old".

Newer is not always better.

73.

Dave G0WBX.





--

73 DE IW9HGS



--
73 Dave H G0CER

1 - 13 of 13