[boost] Re: UI++ [was: GUI sublanguage;Re: GUI/GDI templatelibrary]

From: David B. Held (dheld_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-08-09 14:38:16

"Rob & Lori" <Rob.Lori_at_[hidden]> wrote in message
news:3F3524DA.7010200_at_buckeye-express.com...
> > > [...]
> > > Sigh, it sounds like pretty much everyone is of this same
> > > opinion.  Sure it makes a nice C++ interface, but it doesn't
> > > allow much extensibility,
> > [...]
> Yeah, but it depends on what our goals are in the future.  If we
> just wrap platform API controls and add some extra tweaking
> capability (like changing button color as you mentioned) then
> that would work for a first version.  I guess I'm more worried
> about whether we are going to keep it like this or if we'll be
> moving to doing a Boost.Widget for layor 0 in the future.
>
> I'm really excited about the possibilities for this library, and I'd
> like to make sure that users can extend the Boost.GUI to suit
> their own needs, while keeping such base goals as multi-
> platform support in tact.

Well, honestly, I can't wrap my head around the big vision for how
this thing is proposed to get implemented, so maybe I don't know
what I'm talking about here.  But it seems to me that Layer 0 for
existing GUIs could be designed in such a way that you could
offer custom alternatives for the standard widgets that do your
low-level visual tweaking (messing with functionality might be a bit
much).  So if you wanted to customize the look of a button, there
would be a Layer 0 wrapper, say, for Win32 buttons that provide
the expected interface to Boost.GUI.  But maybe you can inherit
from that wrapper and override some things to do your custom
drawing, and so you still have the required Layer 0 interface that
Boost.GUI needs, but you also get your customization of native
controls.

It seems to me that Boost.GUI could possibly provide hooks for
such things as owner-drawn controls without cluttering up the
interface too much, which should give you quite a bit of
customization power.  Would that be satisfactory?

Dave