Re: [boost] [gui] Help with a little experiment.

Subject: Re: [boost] [gui] Help with a little experiment.
From: Gottlob Frege (gottlobfrege_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-06-18 22:39:39

On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 7:05 AM, Germán Diago <germandiago_at_[hidden]> wrote:

At Adobe we designed an Eve-like (see
http://stlab.adobe.com/group__asl__overview.html) DSEL, that would
make the Eve example:

layout clipping_path
{
    view dialog(name: "Clipping Path")
    {
        column(child_horizontal: align_fill)
        {
            popup(name: "Path:", bind: @path, items:
            [
                { name: "None", value: empty },
                { name: "Path 1", value: 1 },
                { name: "Path 2", value: 2 }
            ]);
            edit_number(name: "Flatness:", digits: 9, bind: @flatness);
        }
        button(name: "OK", default: true, bind: @result);
    }
}

look something like this:

View * MyClass::create_clipping_path
{
    return dialog(name = "Clipping Path")
    [
        column(child_horizontal = align_fill)
        [
            popup(name = "Path:", bindto = &m_path, items = _
            [
                _(name = "None", value = nullptr),
                _(name = "Path 1", value = 1),
                _(name = "Path 2", value = 2)
            ],
            edit_number(name = "Flatness:", digits = 9, bindto = &m_flatness)
        ],
        button(name = "OK", def = true, bindto = &m_result)
    ];
}

And your example:

>
>
> auto gui_definition =
> Window(title="Hello, world!") <<
>        VBox(expand=true) <<
>                HBox(expand=true) <<
>                        Label(text="Name:") && Entry[SLOT(onEntryChanged)])
>                << End(HBox);
>                << Button(text="hello")[SLOT(onButtonClick)];
>        << End(VBox)
> << End(Window);
>

I think would be:

View *MyClass::hello_world()
{
        return Window(title="Hello, world!")
        [
                VBox(expand=true)
                [
                        HBox(expand=true)
                        [
                                Label(text="Name:"),
                                Entry(onChange = onEntryChanged)
                        ],
                        Button(text="hello", onClick = onButtonClick)
                ]
        ];
}

Note that the syntax closely modeled XML, but without the verbosity.
ie it has unique, unordered, attributes (inside the brackets) and
non-unique, ordered elements, [inside the square brackets].

It also, given a "mapping struct", figured out which attributes could
be passed to a widget constructor, and which needed to be set
separately.  ie for Button, if its constructor took a std::string, but
not an "onClick" function, the Button would be constructed via,
essentially:
   button = new Button("hello");
   button->set(onClick, onButtonClick);

Tony