Designer can read a managed-layout form from a GFD file

[Randall Whitman]

With brz964, Designer can read a managed-layout form from a GFD file,
and displays it the same as when the when the same form was created with
the form wizard.

Current implementation of form-layout display in Designer, is by simulating
character-position coordinates - at display time, not at form definition time -
according to managed-layout (hbox/vbox/grid) concepts.
(Did not at this time implement with real wx hbox/vbox & inert input widgets.)


=== Status notes for GNUe Designer ===

 Q: What can do GNUe Designer do now?

 A: As of 2011-06, GNUe Designer new form wizard can create a prototype form,
    which you can manually refine based on the sample GFD files.

After File-Open, Designer marks the form changed/dirty ('*') although
the form is unchanged right after loading the file.
[relates to stopCachingEvents() in base/document.py causing makeDirty,
after we have already called makeClean.]

Attribute s:max_width is not saved in the GFD.

Property Editor appears to make changes, but the changes do not really take
effect - navigate out/in shows old, does not update canvas display,
form not changed/dirty, change not saved in GFD.

User-interaction events such as dragging to rearrange or resize entries,
do not work currently.
(User-interaction events will have somewhat different meaning with
managed layout than with character positioning: when moving an element by
dragging, it is meaningful to change the order of entries, but not to move
an entry to an x,y coordinate.)

Double-click on page name name in tab/header in canvas/layout,
does not allow editing the page name, and does not select the page object
in the Object Navigator (contrast with clicking an Entry widget).

Title of form does not display in Designer - aside from inside the Property
Inspector (& that only when the form object is selected in Object Navigator).

Entries in Vbox do not align, in contrast with Forms.

When a table has columns with camelCaseNames, Designer form wizard
generates Initcapstring labels - better to preserve inner capitals.

If after opening initial window, immediate new-wizard or open file,
leaves a spurious window with unchanged empty document.

PageWidget has a hard-coded height and width currently,
and does not scroll the form.

Designer can generate invalid empty attribute <datasource detaillink="" ...>
in the case of invalid/inconsistent user input in FormBuilder
(see 2011-07-20 irc).

The startup splash image (designer/images/splash.png) - currently not used -
says "version 0.5", an old copyright year, and previous version of GPL.
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnue-dev/2011-02/msg00015.html>

Support for character-position GFD file is removed, assuming it is no
longer needed (PagePainter/skins/common.py).

===


Randall Whitman
http://whizman.com