Re: [ngl-devel] New features and a few changes

[Peter R. Brinkler]

Hi,

Vincent Caron wrote:

> Hello,
>
>   here are some hints from me, Meeloo (NUI maintainer) should have 
> more complete infos.
>
>
> Peter R. Brinkler wrote:
>
> > 1: A border widget which creates a border around the contents. With 
> > the ability to specify the border using a set of svg for the various 
> > border posisions (corner, edge....) .
>
>
>   It does not look like it's in NUI. Something like GtkFrame ?
> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.2/gtk/GtkFrame.html 

More like the ability to do this on all widgets... providing a frame 
widget would be ok, except it leads to deeper widget hierarchies, with 
the possible redraw penalty?.

> > 2: The ability to exclude any number of the subwidgets of 
> > nuiWidgetBox from the scaling of the contents. This is important to 
> > our project, which includes fairly complex interface, where resize 
> > must allow the labels and text to remain same size.
>
>
>   You can write your own nuiWidgetBox-like container with different 
> layout/resize politics, that's the NUI way. 

Yes I can do that, except that I feel that some of that functionality 
would be useful in more than one application, and it would complement 
the current nui-native container in a manner to make it much more 
usable. The ability to exclude widgets from resize is something which 
the gtk box containers do as well, leading to an easier transition for 
the gtk-- programmers.

> > 3: n-way paned widget, for the viewport. Fltk (www.fltk.org) provides 
> > such a widget which may serve as inspiration to the implementor.
>
>
>   We never got it right, a closer look at this FLTK implementation 
> would be nice.

The fltk implementation is nice, although it has some issues with resize 
(like all the rest of fltk) - it does however provide the basic 
capabilities.

> > 6: Choice widget.
>
>
>   What is it ? 

A simple button which has a menu attached with the different choices the 
"choice" provides.
Once a choice has been made, the label of the button is updated with the 
choice. The funcitonality would resemble a that of a radiobutton 
group... except in a menu, with current selection indicated by the buton.

> > 7: Value widgets:
> > class Value;
> > + class InputValue : public Value; // Single line input, with up/down 
> > arrows to manipulate value with mouse. Should include precision, 
> > range, step...
> >  + class InputDoubleValue : public Value;
> >  + class InputStringValue : public Value
> >  + class InputLongValue : public Value
> > + class SliderValue : public Value; // With range, precision, step 
> > and current value indicated.
> >  + class Dial : public SliderValue; // Knobs and such.
> >  + class Wheel : public SliderValue; // Those sgi wheels
> >  + class ProgressBar : public SliderValue;
>
>
>   Part of the answer is in nuiRange. nuiScrollBar can currently be 
> used as a slider.

Yes - except that the scrollbar could in some way illustrate the current 
value.
It also provides a simple consistent interface....

> > 8: Ability to modify the colours (background, border, etc) of the 
> > widgets using this->SetColour( 0xff00aaff );
>
>
>   We would not like to add too many of this features, customization of 
> widgets (shape, colors, etc) should go further via nuiTheme. Several 
> people have notified some interest to work in this area, this is 
> definitively needed. nuiTheme should be a simple layer thats its 
> between the actual widget-specific rendering code and nuiDrawContext. 
> See Qt and GTK+ theming APIs to grasp the idea. 

I certainly see your point, about wanting this to be specified by 
themes... except that some customizations are required.... for instance 
if you want to control the bacground border of a widgetbox to indicate 
common functionality.
Explicitly:
Illustrating that the content of a widgetbox group are polygon creation 
tools, while others are for creating nurbs.... similarly with menus... 
this menu is for nurbs so it's a faint rouge. Colours are a very fast 
method of indicating the "similarity" of tools.

> > 9: Form widget like the one motif defines. The form widget allows:
> >   Ability to specify resizability.
> >  Ability to specify positions of child widget borders as well as 
> > relatively to other child widgets.
> >   Ability to lock child widgets borders to edge of container as well 
> > as other child widget borders including the ability to lock border 
> > positions ( never scale this widget so the border is moved )
>
>
>   Some of this notions won't fit into the layout scheme of NUI (this 
> part is 90% inspired by GTK+). Or to be more precise, you can achieve 
> these goals by selecting the proper containers or writing them with 
> these specific politics. For instance to place a widget at a specific 
> and absolute position, you pack it in a nuiFixed container. 

Correct.... only mention this  because once you have the form you can do 
ui constructs which makes more sense compared to the boxed setup of gtk 
and alike. This I think is the reason that the form widget was so 
frequently requested in the gtk context (or was when I used gtk)

> > 10: Ability to specify animation for button press, menu opening etc. 
> > events.
>
>
>   Animation is a whole topic, never started in NUI.

Self and squeak has some functionality in this direction which might be 
interesting to look at.

> > 11: The ability to specify the images for widgets using svg.
>
>
>   You mean the possibility to interchange images and SVGs more easily ? 

No - the ability to do the "skin" of the widgets using SVG. I'm not sure 
if you can already change the way the slider look or the way the 
splitter-panes look - but using svg for such things would make nice ui 
skinning available to those with an "artistic" inclination.

> > 12: Colour chooser widget
>
>
>   Well, good exercise for a NUI starter, be my guest :)

Right - eventually I'll have to do that, if it's not inthere before 
then.... moonlight will probably need a colour chooser.

> > 14: A RAD tool.
>
>
>   Was started once, someone should be working on it again very soon 
> (Hugy on IRC). See http://sourceforge.net/projects/yapuka

Great.... I looked at that 6-8 months ago but couldn't make it 
compile.... I guess it will only be a matter of time.

> > 15: A tutorial into how to write a custom widget.
>
>
>   Hum, NUI is not even really documented. I mean single-liners 
> attached to methods won't help you much for now, I consider it 
> 'internal memo' state.

I agree - I just put it for eventual inclusion on a "worklist".

Peter