guidoschmidt/potzblitz

Generative UI library for generative projects

⚠️ Pre-Alpha Prototype

Potzblitz

Generative UI toolkit for generative projects

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Rationale

The idea of potzblitz is to use a more declarative approach for defining control user interfaces (UI) for generative artworks and interactive systems. Instead of copy-pasting imperative code over and over again, the UI should be automatically built from the systems configuration.

Speaking in code, instead of doing this:

const ui = new UI();
const button = ui.addButton("redraw");
button.onChange(() => sketch.draw());
ui.add(button);

potzblitz aim to provide a more declarative way. Any system might already have some form of state or a bunch of variables which define a controlable parameter space and a set functions to tweak and change the system:

const settings = {
    seed: 12,
    backgroundColor: "#eebe82",
    particleCount: 2000,
    randomize: () => randomizeParameters(),
    download: () => downloadCanvas(),
}

new UI().build(settings);

Additionally I wanted to have a control library which would could easily be adapted in style and functionality, as well as being able to work with a bunch of different frameworks (React, Solid.js, small Javascript only projects etc.)

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Ideas

This section outlines some thoughts and ideas for this project

• Generalize components in a framework-independant structure? Generate source code for React, Solid.js and other frameworks from a generalize data structure? Web Components API
• Separate a UI builder from its set of components. Have a Map<UiType, Component> which gets fed into the UI Builder to be able to customize and ad in project-specific components easily
• SCSS Themeing
• Plugin API to be able to add in middleware like functionality (e.g. websocket connector for controlling remote systems)
• Track state for an undo/redo history
• Use decorators for specifying UI parameters (range of sliders, which UI component to use, labels, etc.)

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