RE: [boost] Re: Re: GUI sublanguage ?

From: Brock Peabody (brock.peabody_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-08-06 21:13:42

> -----Original Message-----
> From: boost-bounces_at_[hidden]
[mailto:boost-bounces_at_[hidden]]
> On Behalf Of Rainer Deyke
> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 7:47 PM
> To: boost_at_[hidden]
> Subject: [boost] Re: Re: GUI sublanguage ?
> 
> Brock Peabody wrote:
> > I realize that this scheme won't solve all the world's problems, but
> > it
> > comes close :)  You can imagine that one could come up with more
> > composition functions, I just haven't needed any yet.
> 
> I've experimented with a similar system in the past.  I feel that its
> biggest weakness is the lack of priorities.  For example, I always
want my
> multi-line text edit box, which benefits from additional width and
height,
> to receive priority over my buttons, which don't.  However, the
buttons
> ultimately have no maximum size, and I want all of the buttons in a
column
> to have the same width.

One way to fix this would be to make buttons have a fixed size
determined by the text they contain.  

But, maybe you just want to them to be the same size no matter what
their text is.  In this case you need a way to override the default
behaviour.  Maybe a syntax like:

   const int button_width = 50;

   row (edit, fixed_width(button_width, button1));

I suspect though, that what you really want is to make all of the
buttons the same width (and height) as the biggest button in the group.
There is no way to do that with the syntax I've got here, but I could
probably come up with one.

I think you are right though, there may be some situations where you
need some sort of priorities, or the ability to say "both of these
windows share any extra space, but the first one gets twice as much".

Brock