From: Nathaniel Talbott <nathaniel@...>
Date: 2004-04-08T21:24:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Idea: Simplified GTK

On Apr 7, 2004, at 13:19, Hal Fulton wrote:

> If I were you, I'd put together a working example (not too complex,
> not too simple) and write an article about it. Bet Dr Dobbs would
> go for it.

Well, I'm not him, but I'll go ahead and do a little "show and tell" 
here... I recently worked on an application with a Fox GUI, and in the 
process I wrapped some code around Fox to make GUI creation easier. 
Part of my thinking when I built it was that there are two things we do 
when we set up a GUI, and it would be cleaner if we did them as two 
steps instead of mashing them together. Those two steps are setting up 
the components relationships to one another, and setting up the 
component's properties, event handlers, etc. So I ended up with code 
that looks like this:

   class LoginDialog
     include FXUtil

     attr_reader :credentials

     def initialize(app)
       super()
       create(app)
     end

     def create(app)
       template(app) do
         dialog("Login"){vertical{
         matrix{label(:please_log_in); empty
                label("User name:");   text_field(:username)
                label("Password:");    text_field(:password)}
         horizontal(:buttons){button(:ok); button(:cancel)}}}
       end

       setup :please_log_in do |w|
         w.text = "Please log in"
         w.bold = true
       end

       setup :username do |w|
         w.columns_visible = 20
       end

       setup :password do |w|
         w.options |= TEXTFIELD_PASSWD
         w.columns_visible = 20
         w.on_keypress do |source, selector, event|
           if(event.text == "\r")
             ok(source)
           else
             false
           end
         end
       end

       setup :buttons do |w|
         w.options = LAYOUT_CENTER_X
       end

       setup :ok do |w|
         w.text = "&OK"
         w.options |= BUTTON_DEFAULT|BUTTON_INITIAL
         w.on_click{|source, s, e| ok(source)}
       end

       setup :cancel do |w|
         w.text = "&Cancel"
         w.on_click{|source, s, e| cancel(source)}
       end

       build
     end

     def ok(source)
       @credentials = [widget(:username).text, widget(:password).text]
       widget.handle(source, MKUINT(FXDialogBox::ID_ACCEPT, 
SEL_COMMAND), nil)
     end

     def cancel(source)
       widget.handle(source, MKUINT(FXDialogBox::ID_CANCEL, 
SEL_COMMAND), nil)
     end

     def execute
       widget(:username).setFocus
       (widget.execute(PLACEMENT_SCREEN) == 1) ? true : false
     end
   end

Currently 'FXUtil' is in no way ready for prime time, but hopefully 
this code (which is presently live production code) illustrates one 
better way that I found of building GUIs.

Just my $0.02,


Nathaniel
Terralien, Inc.

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