Advice for a graphical drawing application which tools to use?

[philipbergwerf]

Hi, I am a hobby programmer and my main subject is alternative music notation. I want to write a program that can draw PianoScript music notation. Previously I did write in python and used Tkinter canvas to draw the notation.

I want to try to use Lua for the project because of the way I normally program and I love its simplicity of it.

I am wondering if I can use love2d for the purpose of generating a drawing and exporting it to pdf?

The virtual paper should be able to draw vector drawings:
- draw lines
- draw a circle/oval
- draw rectangle
- export the drawing to pdf in some way

What GUI library can I use with Lua that is able to draw vector drawings and export them to pdf? I read the page with GUI libraries but I can not find if this particular purpose is supported. I want to make sure it's possible before learning a whole new system and then discovering I am in the wrong place maybe... Any help is appreciated 🙂

 

[BorkedSystem32]

Hey there,

What you're planning to do isn't really Lua's intended purpose but it is possible either way(see Zerobrane for a full-blown Lua application).

For the GUI library, the only one for Lua I'm aware of is wxLua which will let you construct a GUI using Lua(it hasn't been updated in a long time now but it should still work). I have no experience with it though. As for Love2D, I can't find anything so far on the wiki which would allow you to export a vector image, so try having a look about yourself - all of the different .

I have no experience with building such a program, but I'm going to assume that to make this work, you'll need to connect the two libraries together in a way that will allow a button(e.g. draw a circle) to send a signal to Love2D that will let you draw the graphic, and once you do that, try and connect it in a way that will let you save the drawn graphic as a file. I think that's how it should go anyway...Alternatively, wxLua might actually have functions which allow you to draw graphics without needing to rely on Love2D - it's a very long list and you'll need to play about with some of them, but try reading here.

I hope this helps!