Re: [AD] Leveraging the OS' window management |
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In reply to Vincent Penquerc'h <Vincent.Penquerch@xxxxxxxxxx>: >I do not see major problems with this. >There is similar code to deal with input focus among widgets >in a dialog. This could possibly (I haven't actually thought >of it) be extended, and a window would be a special kind of >widget. >BTW, another annoyance of the dialog manager is the lack of >structure. A tree would be nice, and would open grounds for >this kind of window management. OK, since the GUI *keeps* coming up, here is something I wrote to the Guibrella list a while ago. Please read it, and think carefully before replying, if at all. Please don't keep saying "the GUI needs this, that and the other"; otherwise, it will quickly become a maintenance nightmare with relatively few users. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I know this list has been quiet recently, but it seems like quite a good place to discuss the future of Allegro's GUI. Since we have decided to break backwards compatibility (probably), this now gives us a chance to really review what is going on with the GUI. It seems that we do need a built-in GUI, mainly for the grabber. It is also useful for things like setup, examples, and tests. So we can't really just remove it and tell people to use an add-on. I think we therefore have three main options: Simplify it ----------- Since we have to have a GUI, and it is only used by us for basic things, we could simplify it a good deal. This means removing some widgets we don't need (d_text_list_proc springs to mind), maybe some of the events (MSG_IDLE, perhaps others), and generally tidying up the code (removing things like auto-opening of menus, which has created a lot of complexity). Pros: nice clean GUI, obviously primitive so users will use an add-on instead, easy to maintain once written Cons: needs a rewrite, and lots of people will say `let's extend it' Leave it alone -------------- We already have a working GUI system, with loads of bugfixes applied over the ages, so we could just leave it as it is. Pros: doesn't require any work, doesn't break API in itself Cons: we still have the same situation as currently; people complaining about its lack of features/useability, jumping through hoops to extend it, poor design for a complex GUI system, complex code in which bugs still surface Replace it ---------- We write a general-purpose GUI system which can be extended in a sensible way, and ship it with Allegro. Pros: becomes useful for the general population, gives users a simple and effective way to implement a GUI, useful for games and multimedia applications Cons: requires much implementation work, yet another GUI. If left up to me, I would probably replace it, but this isn't my decision to make. So may I have some input? Please? :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bye for now, -- Laurence Withers, lwithers@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.lwithers.demon.co.uk/
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