[Adonthell-devel] GUI question

[Kai Sterker]

I am currently in the process of further cleaning up the GUI code and
I've reached the first widget that can receive user input.

This raises the question how the GUI should be controlled. The way it
is implemented now, it's keyboard only and the keys are hardcoded. But
you might remember that we had introduced the concept of a control
event, which is a virtual event that can either be triggered by
keyboard, joystick/gamepad or mouse. (SDL 1.3 also supports
touchscreens, so we may have to expand to cover those too).

The way the control event is currently implemented, it is limited to 4
directional and 4 action commands. The question is, should we use that
for the GUI too? So if somebody used WSAD for movement, it would also
move the selection in the GUI? And more importantly, if somebody uses
a gamepad to play, it can also be used to control the GUI! (As an
aside, did anyone ever try a gamepad with Adonthell v0.4?)

OTOH, using control events for the GUI could lead to ambiguous
situations. While typing into a textfield, does 'W' type the letter or
move the selection upwards? So maybe we really do need special code to
support other methods than keyboard input for the GUI. Gamepad buttons
could be mapped to keyboard events, but we'd need a virtual keyboard
for filling in text fields.

Any thoughts on the topic?

Kai