User Interface via Images vs Graphics

[singha]

Hello all,

I am attempting to implement a user interface on the PSP (to input text).  I need to draw a keyboard on the screen and update the cursor, text, etc.  I was wondering what the best way to go about it might be.

METHOD 1: Images
Use Photoshop to create pngs and draw them on top of each other.  For example, draw the keyboard below and the cursor highlight above it, placed in the correct position to be above a letter.

METHOD 2: Graphics
Go through those GU tutorials.  Draw each key by itself and highlight when selected.

I'm leaning towards METHOD 1 because there's no learning curve (anymore since I did tutorial 4, I believe).  It doesn't seem like it would be terribly inefficient in comparison to METHOD 2.

Is there some reason to use METHOD 2 over METHOD 1?  Am I missing something?

Thanks very much!
L

And thank you very much for this forum and the tutorials!  They are both quite helpful.

[AlphaDingDong]

If you're aware that the PSP OSK can be used and still want to create your own OSK then I'd recommend learning the GU and then using method 1.  Draw your keyboard and then use some form of hilight on the selected key.  As for the key hilight, however, I don't know if overlaying a second image would be best.  You could just as easily create a dynamic polygon of some sort for hilighting the selected key.  That way if your keys aren't all the same size you can just adjust the polygon shape for the indicated key rather than having a different overlay image for each key size.  It's also easy to have pulsing hilight effects, etc.

[singha]

Yes, I don't want to use the PSP's standard text entry.  Your advice seems solid.  I'm going to go through  the GU tutorials here (http://www.psp-programming.com/code/doku.php?id=c:pspgu-neheport-lesson1).  Please let me know if these are outdated and there is a better place to learn this.  Just that one broken screenshot is making me question it is all.

Thanks!
L

[AlphaDingDong]

Well, they're old, but the GU hasn't really changed.  They're still probably the best place to learn.  You can also read through graphics.c and try to understand what each line does.  Anything you don't get, either in nehe or in graphics.c, you can ask about here.

[singha]

Thank you very much!