Re[2]: [lmi] tasks 2007: bug 104480: input-sequence editor

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:59:07 +0000 Greg Chicares <address@hidden> wrote:

GC> >> I envision that idea as something like this page:
GC> >>   http://validator.w3.org/
GC> >> with its "Local File:" textcontrol and a "Browse..." button nearby.
GC> 
GC> The part I dislike is that it's only "nearby", but not
GC> contiguous.

 Actually the problem is that visually this button is too big and not
grouped together with the text field. I think that the important thing is
that the button and the text field should be seen as a single control, not
that they should necessarily be superimposed. For example, look at the
picker controls in the wxWidgets widgets sample: IMHO they provide a
relatively clear and familiar UI for the tasks similar to the one at hand,

GC> And, OTOH, wxSpinCtrl is perceived as a single control. What we're
GC> talking about here can be, too, as long as we keep its parts as
GC> close together as wxSpinCtrl's textcontrol and spinbutton are.

 Exactly.

GC> If wx wants a textcontrol-with-dialog-button in wx, then it makes
GC> no difference to me how it's implemented: I'd just use its published
GC> API.

 Currently wx has wxPickerBase which can be used to easily implement a
control containing (separate) wxTextCtrl and wxButton. If we really want to
have a button embedded in text control, we'd need to do it ourselves. This
could be interesting/useful but it will definitely be more time consuming
too.

GC> In ms 'excel', the button is actually inside the textcontrol.

 FWIW, the control used by Excel is not a text control at all (quick way to
see it: press the right mouse button in the control, you won't see the
familiar text control popup menu), but a custom control which draws the
button (which is not a standard button neither) itself.

GC> so this might be more generally useful than it at first seems.
GC> But that is for the wx maintainers to decide.

 I definitely agree that functionally speaking such control is useful and
so we could add some wxCustomPicker class deriving from wxPickerBase to wx
to make it possible to create such controls even easier. But I'm not sure
if it's worth the hassle to try to put the button inside the text control
at any price.

 Please let us know what do you think about this, thanks,
VZ