Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!bjaspan
From: bjaspan@athena.mit.edu (Barr3y Jaspan)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: what's most important to you for R5?
Message-ID: <1990Jun30.165246.1751@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 30 Jun 90 16:52:46 GMT
References: <20555@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
Reply-To: bjaspan@athena.mit.edu (Barr3y Jaspan)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 31

The general-layout support in the Athena widget is very lacking.  There are
two things I'd like to see:

(1)  The current form widget modified so that it does name -> widget binding on
it's children's resources when XtRealizeWidget is called.  Currently, if
i create
widget FOO and then widget BAR, I cannot place BAR to the left or above FOO
because if I reference BAR in FOO's resources the form widget chokes (since BAR
doesn't exist yet).  An important part of a form widget is to allow the user to
*completely* redesign the layout; presently, the layout is constrained
by the order the widgets are created in the C source code.

(2)  A general-layout widget based on the "boxes and glue" concept of
TeX, much like the InterViews form widget.  There would have to be a way
to specify (a) the relative positions of all the widgets and (b) the
glue between them completely in resources.  Glue would not be difficult;
just use TeX's syntax (<natural size>+<strechability>-<shrinkability>
where the last two are optional and can be special strings for various
levels of infinity).  The positioning stuff could probably be done as in
the current form, with (of course) the modification of binding names to
widgets at realize time.  {Going back and rereading this paragraph, I
realize that the "boxes" part was completely left out.  That's okay, you
wouldn't want to use my design anyway.  :-)}

There are lots of other details that a general-layout widget must be able to
support.  Will there be a "This Is Our General Design For New Stuff In R5"
document availabe to consortium members?


Barr3y Jaspan
Student Information Processing Board (SIPB)