Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!iconsys!caeco!vixen!joe
From: joe@vixen.uucp (Joe Hitchens)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Standard Gadgets
Keywords: gadgets intuition 1.4
Message-ID: <344@vixen.uucp>
Date: 14 Jan 90 10:24:23 GMT
Organization: Sleepless Software
Lines: 31

I suppose it is just about too late for idea suggestions for the
next OS release, but I have one that I'll mention anyway.

I wish, oh how I wish, there had been some standard Intuition library
calls that would return default/standard gadgets and other Intuition
entities.

For example, I would call an Intuition function that would return 
a pointer to a Gadget structure that was already initialized with
pointers to IntuiText and Image stuff for a simple, but nice button.
Thus, to build a simple window, I could just "get" a few gadgets, 
and open the window.
In other words, I want a function to "just give me a nice looking
button that says O.K.", or "give me a nice looking string gadget that
will hold 10 characters".  You get the idea.

If this were built into the OS, there would be several benefits.

 * My program would be smaller and simpler to write.
 * Chip ram usage could be reduced because the same imagery could be
   used for all gadgets of the same type ... sort of thing.
 * Applications would start to have a "consistent" user interface, which
   is often cited as one of the Mac's neatest things.
 * Maybe some others I can't think of right now.

j.h.

-- 
___________________________________________________________________________
Joe Hitchens -- Artist, Sculptor, Animator of Sculpture, Iconographer Adept
joe@vixen  ...!uunet!iconsys!caeco!vixen!joe         Phone: (801) 292-2190