ABOUT Octave-FLTK

Octave-FLTK is a port of the FLTK-1.1.6 GUI toolkit/library, for the popular free software, GNU Octave.

It helps us to

Write nice cross platform GUI's from Octave. Yes, FLTK runs on Mac OS X, WIN 32, UNIX, Linux and relatives. Truly cross platform.
Write light weight GUI's based on FLTK. With the standard controls in any GUI toolkit, and lightest memory footprint, on the application, FLTK is an ideal choice for writing applications.
Visualize matrices in color.
Write simple & fast GUI programs, using Octave backend. Move all your memory hungry C/C++ matrix, and numeric code to Octave, and ease your application development using Octave backend. Simultaneously, you could also, reduce the amount your GUI work, based on just your application logic, without duplicating your mathematics; Octave already has done that for you.
Possibly if you use any other prorietary platform, for computing, for lack of a UI toolkit & editor for Octave, then please choose Octave now: FLTK extensions help tide over this fact.
If your GUI programs use heavy scientific data, and if youre writing lots of C/C++ code to do the same things found in Octave libraries, you could choose to move your mathematic-engine based on Octave, and GUI based on Octave-FLTK.
If youre writing some apps to do Image processing, and continuous visualization of matrices, you could do all the Image processing using Octave, and continuously, update your output GUI Window, without recourse to pipes, and IPC : Just using Octave-FLTK.

INSTALLATION:

1: ./configure --prefix=/your/directory/for/installation 2: make
3: make install

DEPENDENCIES:

Octave-FLTK depends on

GNU Octave: which must be built with shared libraries, and

dynamic loading turned on. FLTK-1.1.6 Library: Version 1.1.6 or lesser.

                Specifically FLTK-2.0+ version arenot supported
        at the moment.

N.B: each of these has their own dependencies in turn.

Documentation & Examples

Please look into the 'doc' directory for more documentation on the API usage.

Please look into the 'examples' directory for Octave-FLTK examples.

LICENSE        FLTK & OCTAVE are licensed under GNU GPL.
               So this project which links against both,
               follows GNU GPL.
************************************************************
AUTHOR         -Muthiah Annamalai <gnumuthu@users.sf.net>

Original FLTK-1.1.6 Readme file

FLTK (pronounced "fulltick") is a LGPL'd C++ graphical user interface toolkit for X (UNIX), OpenGL, and WIN32 (Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, 95, or 98). It is currently maintained by a small group of developers across the world with a central repository in the US.

FLTK was originally created to build in-house applications at Digital Domain for image processing and 3D graphics. The original author, Bill Spitzak, received permission from Digital Domain to release it to the public domain in the hopes that it could be used to make better, faster, and nicer-looking UNIX programs. Di gital Domain has since withdrawn support for FLTK, but Bill is still able to work on it from time to time.

FLTK was designed to be small and modular enough to be statically linked. FLTK also works fine as a shared library and has started being included on Linux distributions. Here are some of the core features unique to FLTK:

sizeof(Fl_Widget) = 40 - 48K
The "core" (the "hello" program compiled & linked with a static FLTK library using gcc on a 486 and then stripped) is 110K.
The FLUID program (which includes every widget) is 372K.
Does not use macros, templates, multiple inheritance, or exceptions.
Written directly atop Xlib (or the WIN32 API) for maximum speed, and carefully optimized for code size and performance.
Precise low-level compatibility between the X and Windows version (only about 10% of the code is different).
Interactive user interface builder program. Output is human-readable and editable C++ source code.
Support for the X double buffering extension (emulation if not available and under Windows)
Support for X overlay hardware (emulation if none and under Windows)
Very small & fast portable 2-D drawing library to hide Xlib and WIN32
OpenGL/Mesa drawing area widget
Support for OpenGL overlay hardware on both X and Windows. Emulation if none.
Text input fields with Emacs key bindings, cut & paste, and foreign letter compose!
Compatability header file for the GLUT library
Compatability header file for the XForms library
Much too much to list here...

FLTK comes with complete free source code. FLTK is available under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL). Contrary to popular belief, it can be used in commercial software!