Re: [boost] [rfc] cppgui

Subject: Re: [boost] [rfc] cppgui
From: Felipe Magno de Almeida (felipe.m.almeida_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-06-22 08:21:41

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 9:12 AM, Tomas<pecholt_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> I also agree that using MVC pattern for more complex controls like tables
> and trees is a good thing because of its flexibility. On the other hand
> there are situations where you only need to fill the
> control with data and present it to the user. In such case using MVC
> would mean redundant typying. So I would take inspiration from Qt
> here. For example for a tree widget, there are two options: QTreeView
> which has MVC interface and then QTreeWidget which inherits from
> QTreeView, plugs default model and adds some easy interface for adding
> items etc.

Yes, I think that is a good idea. The win32 has something like this
with ListBox and ListView too.

> +1 for the named parameter interface which you introduced

Thanks :).

> Another very important aspect is layouting the controls. I think this
> is so important feature it should be thought over in the beginning (now). I
> have seen your examples and I saw you simply set position
> and size for each widget. This is nice but it simply doesn't work for
> real applications from 2 reasons:
> - it's much simpler to set size constraints for widgets like maximum
>  size, stretching factor, borders and then let the layout system to
>  position and size widgets automatically than do the calculations and
>  repositioning yourself when something changes (like when user resizes
>  the dialog)
> - if I understand it correctly your gui can be used to write
>  multiplatform code. Like one code for windows and linux
>  version of the app. But on every platform the sizes of individual
>  widgets are different, the default fonts are different and you
>  certainly don't want to be bothered with this.
> For the start something like vertical/horizontal layout would be sufficient

Seems appropriate. I'll investigate it. Do you have a syntax you find
appealing to work with named parameters in this?

> It would be interesting to have an option to be be able to load GUI
> definition from xml file. It would enable using GUI designers which
> save time and also make code compile faster. But I understand it's
> too early for such functionality.

In win32 you can use resource files. I'll soon start support for QtDesigner too.
I want every tool the platform supports to be usable by the user.
This way the user can design its Gui with the look&feel most
appropriate for the platform.
I might later add some form of DSEL to create GUIs. But that won't be
for some time.

Regards,
-- 
Felipe Magno de Almeida