Re: [ngl-devel] New features and a few changes

[Vincent Caron]

Hello,

  here are some hints from me, Meeloo (NUI maintainer) should have more 
complete infos.


Peter R. Brinkler wrote:
> 1: A border widget which creates a border around the contents. With the 
> ability to specify the border using a set of svg for the various border 
> posisions (corner, edge....) .

  It does not look like it's in NUI. Something like GtkFrame ?
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.2/gtk/GtkFrame.html


> 2: The ability to exclude any number of the subwidgets of nuiWidgetBox 
> from the scaling of the contents. This is important to our project, 
> which includes fairly complex interface, where resize must allow the 
> labels and text to remain same size.

  You can write your own nuiWidgetBox-like container with different 
layout/resize politics, that's the NUI way.


> 3: n-way paned widget, for the viewport. Fltk (www.fltk.org) provides 
> such a widget which may serve as inspiration to the implementor.

  We never got it right, a closer look at this FLTK implementation 
would be nice.


> 4: Tabbed container.

  Effectively lacking.


> 5: Scrolled container for adding scrollbars around children.

  Looks like nuiScrolledView.


> 6: Choice widget.

  What is it ?


> 7: Value widgets:
> class Value;
> + class InputValue : public Value; // Single line input, with up/down 
> arrows to manipulate value with mouse. Should include precision, range, 
> step...
>  + class InputDoubleValue : public Value;
>  + class InputStringValue : public Value
>  + class InputLongValue : public Value
> + class SliderValue : public Value; // With range, precision, step and 
> current value indicated.
>  + class Dial : public SliderValue; // Knobs and such.
>  + class Wheel : public SliderValue; // Those sgi wheels
>  + class ProgressBar : public SliderValue;

  Part of the answer is in nuiRange. nuiScrollBar can currently be used 
as a slider.


> 8: Ability to modify the colours (background, border, etc) of the 
> widgets using this->SetColour( 0xff00aaff );

  We would not like to add too many of this features, customization of 
widgets (shape, colors, etc) should go further via nuiTheme. Several 
people have notified some interest to work in this area, this is 
definitively needed. nuiTheme should be a simple layer thats its between 
the actual widget-specific rendering code and nuiDrawContext. See Qt and 
GTK+ theming APIs to grasp the idea.


> 9: Form widget like the one motif defines. The form widget allows:
>   Ability to specify resizability.
>  Ability to specify positions of child widget borders as well as 
> relatively to other child widgets.
>   Ability to lock child widgets borders to edge of container as well as 
> other child widget borders including the ability to lock border 
> positions ( never scale this widget so the border is moved )

  Some of this notions won't fit into the layout scheme of NUI (this 
part is 90% inspired by GTK+). Or to be more precise, you can achieve 
these goals by selecting the proper containers or writing them with 
these specific politics. For instance to place a widget at a specific 
and absolute position, you pack it in a nuiFixed container.


> 10: Ability to specify animation for button press, menu opening etc. 
> events.

  Animation is a whole topic, never started in NUI.


> 11: The ability to specify the images for widgets using svg.

  You mean the possibility to interchange images and SVGs more easily ?


> 12: Colour chooser widget

  Well, good exercise for a NUI starter, be my guest :)


> 13: Ramp widget - A widget which creates a ramp between one or more 
> colours:


> 14: A RAD tool.

  Was started once, someone should be working on it again very soon 
(Hugy on IRC). See http://sourceforge.net/projects/yapuka


> 15: A tutorial into how to write a custom widget.

  Hum, NUI is not even really documented. I mean single-liners attached 
to methods won't help you much for now, I consider it 'internal memo' state.


> 16: Demos for each type of functionality/Widget

  You have Meeloo's scratchpad named 'nuitest', and the generic demo 
name 'tester' (which should only need the addition of an XML file per 
widget/situation).


> More to come......

  Ouch ;). See you,

Vincent