From: Lyle Johnson <ljohnson@...>
Date: 2001-05-17T02:10:09+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:15302] Re: Q: GUI framework with direct drawing ca pabilities?

> Someone earlier in this thread suggested something like:
>
> > p = Panel.new(
> > Button.new( "Hey, world!" ), ALIGN_LEFT, MORE_CONSTRAINTS,
> #...
> > Panel.new(
> > Slider.new( 0, 10, 5 ), SOME_CONSTRAINTS, #...
> > Checkbox.new( "Label" ), CONSTRAINTS, #...
> > ),
> > login_panel, CONSTRAINTS
> > )
>
> and commented that:
>
> > I'm not sure this would work in Ruby, because the callbacks would have
to
> fit
> > in there and would mess up the tree; I did, however, like the fact that
> GUIs >
>
> but with FXRuby, callbacks wouldn't have to affect the tree, since the
links
> to callbacks
> are just one of the "MORE_CONSTRAINTS".
>
> How hard would it be to implement this style?

I am not familiar with MUI so I will probably miss a lot of the point(s) of
Sean's original comments. But FOX and FXRuby already have a fairly explicit
link between parent and child widgets in a widget's constructor; the first
argument to almost every widget's constructor is its parent widget, e.g.

    aNewButton = FXButton.new(myParent, "buttonText", ...)

So if the main benefit that you're getting from the MUI style shown earlier
is a *visual* hint of the (tree-like) parent-child hierarchy, I'd prefer to
leave things as-is and just use indenting of the source to indicate that
structure, i.e.

    parentFrame = FXHorizontalFrame.new(parentContainer, ...)
        childWidget1 = FXLabel.new(parentFrame, ...)
        childWidget2 = FXButton.new(parentFrame, ...)
        childWidget3 = FXVerticalFrame.new(parentFrame, ...)
            vertFrameChild1 = some other widget...

And as for layout constraints, those are also part of a FOX widget's
argument list (i.e. they don't have to be specified separately) and so I
think that's also covered. Again, I'm not familiar with MUI yet and so this
may be missing the point ;)