GUI programming using JControl/Vole

In the world of JControl, Vole is the name of a library of functions, that is supposed to be used to develop graphical user interfaces for small and compact systems. In this spirit, JControl/Vole has something in common with the rodent: both are small, compact and rather agile.

The main application area of JControl/Vole is measurement, control and automation. Besides some standard components like buttons, sliders, check boxes or combo boxes it provides visual instruments for displaying measured values - e.g. bar graphs or analogue meters. Furthermore, there is an utterly efficient concept for message oriented event handling.

On the top of JControl/Vole, focus-based graphical user interfaces can be developed. Focus-based means, that a graphical component (i.e. a button) has to be selected befor it can be pressed. The selection is done by a cursor-like keypad (see Figure 1) using the keys Up ('U'), Down ('D'), Left ('L'), Right ('R') und Select ('S'). Such a cursor-like keypad is mountet on the JControl/SmartDisplay Evaluation-Board.

Figure 1: A cursor-like Keypad

This tutorial presents the basic concepts of Vole and the library elements, giving examples that are easy to understand. A deeper insight into JControl/Vole is given by the (German) publication JAVA-basierte Benutzeroberflächen für extrem kompakte eingebettete Systeme, you'll find in the section Documentation.

Download: This tutorial including sources and resources and the JControl/IDE project file (.jcp) as ZIP archive.