Canvas - Getting started

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Normally, you would start by prototyping instruments using a standalone GUI dialog, which greatly simplifies the whole prototyping process, because reloading/switching aircraft in FG still works only very unreliably - equally, lose coupling is much easier to accomplish by using a standalone GUI dialog. For starters, you will probably want to use the Nasal console and play with the code snippets from: Canvas Snippets The whole idea of this article is to get people started doing basic stuff, and then let them integrate things as required - i.e. "Canvas Snippets" is all about providing building blocks that can be adapted as needed. — Hooray (Jul 7th, 2015). Re: Developing a Canvas Cockpit for the CRJ700. (powered by Instant-Cquotes)

Features closely related to existing stuff (think PFD, ND, EICAS/EFIS) would ideally be based on adapting, generaliing and refactoring existing code (as per Gijs' ND effort) though - but you would inevitably benefit from knowing how Nasal/Canvas work under the hood, especially in order to learn how to use the corresponding frameworks (think MapStructure), because most people have a hard time understanding the reasons for contributing to a generic/aircraft-agnostic effort even though their primary motivation is a single project only. — Hooray (Jul 7th, 2015). Re: Developing a Canvas Cockpit for the CRJ700. (powered by Instant-Cquotes)

In other words, feel free to ask questions or help improve the wiki docs if you think anything is missing - please do so via the main Canvas forum, we should usually be able to answer most questions pretty quickly, or at least provide snippets/pointers to snippets. You will definitely benefit from understanding Nasal, and object-oriented programming in particular, a few fairly accessible introductory articles are these: Howto:Start using vectors and hashes in Nasal Object oriented programming in Nasal Object Oriented Programming with Nasal Once you have worked through these and played with a few examples, I would suggest to look at the Canvas docs, the API reference, and the snippets on the wiki. For prototyping purposes, I would suggest to create a standard canvas GUI dialog: Howto:Creating a Canvas GUI dialog file And you should also learn how to use io.include() and friends to split up your Nasal sources into separate files and make things more modular. — Hooray (Jul 7th, 2015). Re: Developing a Canvas Cockpit for the CRJ700. (powered by Instant-Cquotes)

Note that you don't need to be an experienced Nasal coder to use Nasal/Canvas, but understanding a few basic concepts will greatly simplify the whole process. The other part of this is artwork, which is usually created/edited using the Inkscape SVG editor. And it also makes sense to look at people who have previously done related work (e.g. Gijs, Hyde, artix, Philosopher, TheTom etc) - if in doubt, check the commit logs of aircraft using Canvas to look up whose involved. (but please don't just send tons of PMs to those, but instead ask general questions on the forum, and offer to provide something in return, i.e. document your journey, help improve the wiki/docs or help improve/write tutorials etc) — Hooray (Jul 7th, 2015). Re: Developing a Canvas Cockpit for the CRJ700. (powered by Instant-Cquotes)

For a few more relevant pointers/discussions, please see: search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=canvas+animated+svg search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=canvas+animated+inkscape search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=nasal+canvas+animated+timers+listeners (it would be great, if someone could copy relevant stuff over to the wiki so that these postings can be turned into a new wiki article) — Hooray (Jul 7th, 2015). Re: Developing a Canvas Cockpit for the CRJ700. (powered by Instant-Cquotes)

Features closely related to existing stuff (think PFD, ND, EICAS/EFIS) would ideally be based on adapting, generaliing and refactoring existing code (as per Gijs' ND effort) though - but you would inevitably benefit from knowing how Nasal/Canvas work under the hood, especially in order to learn how to use the corresponding frameworks (think MapStructure), because most people have a hard time understanding the reasons for contributing to a generic/aircraft-agnostic effort even though their primary motivation is a single project only. — Hooray (Jul 7th, 2015). Re: Developing a Canvas Cockpit for the CRJ700. (powered by Instant-Cquotes)

Canvas - the FlightGear 2D drawing API
Canvas - Main Page Canvas News - for the latest developments Shiva Alternatives - ongoing work for Core Profile support Canvas Efforts - projects using the Canvas system Canvas FAQs - frequently asked questions Canvas - Getting started Canvas Development (core) Canvas Troubleshooting (core) Canvas Sandbox (core) PUI2Canvas (PUI/XML Parser) Canvas GUI Canvas Widgets Canvas Maps Canvas Snippets
RFC
Canvas Instancing Howto:New Canvas Execution Model Canvas SVG Canvas Popout Windows Canvas Scenery Overlays
Frameworks
Canvas Map API (soon deprecated!) Canvas MapStructure Canvas MapStructure Layers MapStructure Snippets Canvas Radar Canvas Animation Framework (WIP) Canvas Plotting Framework (WIP) Canvas MFD Framework Canvas ND Framework Canvas PFD Framework Canvas MCDU Framework Canvas EFB Framework Canvas Wrappers Canvas Glass Cockpit Efforts
Tutorials
Howto:Getting started with Canvas Howto: Canvas Troubleshooting Howto:Adding a canvas to a GUI dialog (PUI!) Howto:Creating a Canvas GUI dialog file (New) Howto:Dynamic Liveries via Canvas (new) Howto:Creating a Canvas GUI Widget Howto:Add a 2D canvas instrument to your aircraft Howto:Parsing 2D Instruments using the Canvas Howto:Creating fullscreen Canvas applications Howto:Use SVG inside a Canvas Howto:Extend the Canvas SVG module Howto:Serializing a Canvas to SVG Howto:Canvas applications as Nasal submodules Howto:Using raster images and nested canvases Canvas HUD Howto:Project 3D to 2D coordinates on desktop canvas
Reference
Canvas Element Group Image Map Path Text Canvas Nasal API MessageBox Layout System Canvas GUI API Canvas draw library Event Handling
Related
Canvas Properties Unifying the 2D rendering backend via canvas Howto:Use a Camera View in an Instrument Howto:Extending Canvas to support rendering 3D models Howto:Extending Canvas to support MathGL
To be ported
Navigation display Map FGCanvas Canvas Nasal/JavaScript Subset
Deprecated by Canvas
Complex Glass Cockpit Avionics
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