TouchGFX documentation feedback

[Romain DIELEMAN]

We wish to always improve our documentation. The best reviews and critics always come from the people that read it, so we would like to use this post to collect your thoughts and feedbacks.

Please share what you like, dislike, what you think is missing, etc ...

/The TouchGFX team

[wired]

The written documentation is quite good. There may be some areas where additional explanation/rationale for using a particular widget would be helpful. What I would like to see most, however, is written or video tutorials on how to take a TouchGFX Designer project and use it in STM32CubeIDE, EWARM, etc. I am so far unable to do so successfully, so it is apparently not as simple as, for example, opening up the Project workspace file under the EWARM folder, or opening the .project file for STM32CubeIDE.

[GBert.2]

Adding common strategies/design patterns to propagate information from and to the model would be interesting.

For example:

• What is the best way to update a custom component across multiple Screens?
• How to implement "SwitchScreen()" in touchgfx?

[Michael K]

I'm still having this issue where if I search and land on a class reference page, all the further links I click on the page 404 until I refresh. It's honestly pretty annoying and has been present since the documentation pages were released :(

Also, most google results point to previous versions of the documentation. Maybe you should have a single canonical "current version" URL path (e,g. support.touchgfx.com/latest/docs/..., and have different paths to the previous versions that are ignored by google so that google searches always lead to the latest version (e.g. support.touchgfx.com/archive/4.15/docs/...).

[Romain DIELEMAN]

Hello Michael,

​

Could you share your browser again ? We thought this was fixed so it is bad news to hear that :grinning_face_with_sweat: (tried to replicate it myself just now with Chrome 93.0.4577.63 but it worked fine).

​

I'll forward the comment on the "current version" URL path as well :thumbs_up: It makes sense.

/Romain

[Michael K]

Welp, I figured I'd make sure I was fully up-to-date before replying, and seems like Brave Version 1.32.115 Chromium: 96.0.4664.93 (Official Build) (64-bit)

the problem is fixed. I swear it hasn't been THAT long since I last updated! :) Sorry about that.

However while I was checking this I noticed that a lot of API Reference results aren't being returned by the search bar. For example:

The result points to the user manual page for the Dynamic Graph:

When there should be a result directly pointing to the API reference. I know this functionality existed before.

[HP_it]

I know it's not really related to the documentation but then again - it would be greatly appreciated to know when a new version is released. 4.19.0 released 21st of March but only because I looked at the changelog I noticed!

Can't you write it into your release-flow that a sticky forum post would be a good idea to notify users of a new version?

Thanks for your great work! I'll look forward to play around with the new version :)

[wired]

After having spent two weeks trying to upgrade (unsuccessfully) a working project to the latest CubeIDE, CubeMX, and TouchGFX, I was informed by ST Tech Support not to use CubeMX 6.6.1, but remain at 6.5.0 (see https://community.st.com/s/question/0D53W00001hljujSAA for more information about that). My suggestion is that ST put compatibility information in an easy to find spot in the online documentation. Had I known that using TouchGFX with CubeMX 6.6.1 would cause problems, I would not have upgraded. I'm sure there are many customers who use other ST tools in conjunction with TouchGFX so compatibility issues are important.

[RBoud.1]

Very good documentation but I don't know if I missed it. I was hoping when you describe a function in the library, please also suggest which library file (.h) to include as most of the time. it is not obvious or at least for me. it is not.

[Richard Lowe]

Documentation overall is pretty good. Several things are missing that would be helpful. For instance: Looking up the Gradients class you find the basic generated documentation but is lacks any real meaningful explanation on how it is used.

All public functions are lacking any documentation on many of the classes.

I've struggled with TouchGFX for several weeks. Still pulling hair and frustrated on how the engine is assembled and what is called and what isn't. I've been attempting to use TouchGFX with various SPI based displays and to date, I have limited success due to lack of documentation.

[Yoann KLEIN]

Hello,

Thanks for your input, I will let my colleagues know.

If you have other examples of things that should be improved in our documentation, please report.

/Yoann

[Richard Lowe]

I'd really like to see an example with E-Ink displays and any non-traditional displays. Anything that demonstrates the versatility of TouchGFX. At the moment it feels contrary to the description that it is suitable for all displays.

[ferro]

Hi,

I started to use TouchGFX few days ago and it took me a while to understand that there is only 1 Model for the whole GFX (I come from Qt world so had to readjust to GFX's use of Model concept). I think it would help a lot if this was emphasized in docementation a bit more eg:

 

Or as it is done in this document:

www(dot)e4ds(dot)com/prom/files/Quest_5_Material.pdf

 

Ferro

[ferro]

Hi,

In colortype we read that:

"Note that in order to maintain backwards compatibility, casting this type to an integral value will yield a 16-bit value."

Seems as a leftover from older GFX versions(?) as there are no cast operator overloads in v4.21.1 (other than uint32_t)

Ferro

[Bertha]

Hi guys here my experience with touchGFX documentation :

I tried implementing TouchGFX about a year ago, probably version 17. At the time, I could understand the frustration expressed on the forums regarding the old documentation. So, I switched to another library, written in C, which I was able to port with touch features in just a few hours.

Yesterday, for no particular reason, I decided to give TouchGFX another chance and I was pleasantly surprised by the new documentation. It's a big improvement, so big thumbs up to the TouchGFX team for making it better.

Now I feel like I have a good overall picture of TouchGFX, and the small issue I'm facing right now is probably due to my lack of knowledge in C++.

Thanks again for this work

[Osman SOYKURT]

Hello Bertha,

Thank you for your message, I'll pass the word to the team. It's nice to hear you're having a great experience with TouchGFX :)

/Osman

[Bertha]

Hi Osman,
I would not say « Great » but « better »,I am still working on it and documentation on integration with custom hardware can be improved.
But for sure you guys are going in the right direction.
Regards