Small footprint

The QNX Photon microGUI can be used to develop GUIs for large desktop environments, or for tiny, embedded systems. Features supporting a small footprint include:

• shrinking of shared library sizes
• code reuse in new components, to reduce widget library footprints
• linkage profile optimization to reduce the code applications pull in from libraries

Thanks to the underlying QNX Neutrino microkernel architecture, developers can easily add or remove components (such as input, graphics or font managers) to meet footprint requirements.

Multi-headed display configurations

The QNX Photon microGUI supports multi-headed display configuration:

• Single display to multiple monitors — present the entire QNX Photon microGUI space, displayed across a number of monitors
• Multiple displays to multiple monitors— use a single head unit for multiple displays on multiple monitors

Optional components

Optional QNX Photon microGUI components include widget libraries with more than 80 widgets, graphics drivers, input drivers (mouse, keyboard, touchscreen), Photon utilities, such as terminal, file manager, multiscreen desktop manager, editors and HTML viewers, and source code for utilities and sample program.

The QNX Photon microGUI’s widget-based HMI development approach simplifies and speeds the work required to create sophisticated user interfaces. Features it supports include:

• clip-draw primitives, including widget drawing
• widget and other other GUI component re-use
• new GUI component creation from existing parts, such as sliders and buttons
• pre-built and custom sophisticated widgets, such as scrolling lists, tree widgets, terminal widgets for running command-line applications and graph widgets
• alpha blending and transparency

Developers can control multiple layers of a graphics chip, drawing to specific layers and controlling layer blending, order and visibility. If the hardware supports video, they can implement video overlays to display external video input.

Flicker-free widget rendering

The QNX Photon microGUI enables developers to build user interfaces that are efficient and free of distracting—and tiring—flicker. It reduces CPU consumption and optimizes performance by doing away with redundant or otherwise unnecessary calculations, and eliminates distracting flickering, even in the complex, dynamically altered user interfaces.

Fonts and input

The QNX Photon microGUI supports scalable fonts, such as TrueType and bitmap fonts. Font and input support includes small-footprint, scalable stroke fonts for Asian languages, such as Chinese and Japanese, as well as input for these languages.

Customization

Developers can easily customize widgets and other GUI elements, such as buttons, menus and windows, either individually or globally.

Customizable widget libraries and Photon hooks facilitate widget re-skinning and behavior changes.

Upgrades

Virtually any part of a GUI can receive additions, replacements or upgrades without even a reboot.

Application builder

Developers can use the QNX application builder to design QNX Photon microGUI applications without writing a single line of code.

Phindows (Photon in Windows) is a remote connectivity tool that lets developers interact with a Photon microGUI application from a Windows desktop, across an IP network or serial link.

It provides the same remote interaction between a QNX Photon session and a Microsoft Windows desktop as that offered by the Photon microGUI for remote interaction between QNX systems.

Benefits

Some of the benefits offered by Phindows are:

• reduced hardware costs — embedded devices do not require a dedicated physical screen or keyboard
• increased developer productivity — Photon applications can be built and tested from a Windows desktop, reducing the need for clumsy simulators
• application portability — a Photon program can run on both a QNX target and (virtually) on a Windows desktop without any re-coding or re-compiling
• reduced support costs — developers do not need to be on-site to debug Photon applications: a mouse click created by a remote user is exactly the same as a mouse click created by the local user

Connections and interactions

Phindows offers a wide range of possiblilities for connections and interactions between a Photon session and a Windows desktop, including:

• multiple, independent sessions
• shared or exclusive input devices
• multiple input devices (cursors, mice and keyboards) Phindows can connect to Photon sessions in a variety of modes:
• application specific — the Photon application looks like any Windows program on a Windows desktop
• kiosk — the Photon session takes over the full Windows desktop screen
• multiple-screen — developers can connect to portions of the Photon session outside the target display, turning a single display target into a multiple display target; they can drag Photon applications from the target display to the Windows display, so that all graphics appear on the remote Windows display
• view-only — developers can connect to an existing Photon session from the Windows desktop, but forbid interaction with the session

Performance tuning and security

Phindows performance can be tuned for optimal performance with the available connection speed, RAM and disk resources, and security requirements. It supports:

• data compression on transferred data —or slow links between fast computers
• configurable RAM and disk caches — cache images on the Windows machine, so that they are transferred only once, and persist across reboots
• local Window fonts — fonts can be rendered as bitmaps and sent from the Photon session to the Windows desktop (and stored in font cache), or rendered on Windows using local font files; developers can blend font options to maintain the desired font appearance while minimizing the data transmission load
• security — developers can specify an encryption key for the Windows remote end that must match the key on the QNX host, and require a user ID and password on connection

System requirements

• QNX 6.3 or more recent
• Windows 2000 or Windows XP
• Supported target systems include ARM, MIPS, PPC, SH4 and X86