Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!lethe!yunexus!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!cbmvax!peter From: peter@cbmvax.commodore.com (Peter Cherna) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer Subject: Re: GadTools functionality Message-ID: <18096@cbmvax.commodore.com> Date: 25 Jan 91 22:38:43 GMT References: <91023.105132GHGAQA4@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be> Reply-To: peter@cbmvax.commodore.com (Peter Cherna) Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA Lines: 57 In article mwm@pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) writes: >I have a similar complaint about gadtools - the gadgets are about >three times as hard to build as gadgets in the Motif ToolKit. For >example, a simple pushbutton from Gadtools requires specifying >position and size (among other things). Motif requires specifing only >the name and the containing object. We needed a lot of things in the gadget area. This included easier gadget creation, more powerful gadget types that took care of details, and layout support. It is never possible to have everything, and in the case of GadTools, you get the first two of these three things. Note that nothing in GadTools prevents the solution of the rest of the problem some other time. As well, GadTools does not subtract anything either, since you can still use Intuition gadgets (alone or alongside GadTools gadgets). GadTools is proving to be a very popular part of 2.0 among developers. That it does not yet solve all problems has not deterred developers from using and enjoying it. >When I asked the author of >gadtools about this, his replies indicated that he thought things >ought to be this way. That gadtools are insufficient for building >requesters didn't bother him either. As the author of GadTools, I'm not so pleased to be misquoted in public. My comments about GadTools and layout have never deviated from the above. Any real project requires that real decisions need to be made. Real decisions include the decision to leave a part of a project for next time so that the rest of that project might be available sooner (or at all). The GadTools functions SPECIFICALLY have requester parameters for that future expansion. I consider this support important enough to plan for it. I consider requester support considerably less important than many of the other features and attributes of GadTools and Intuition, which I am also responsible for. Which bugs would you have liked me to leave in exchange? As well, a large number of programmers are forsaking requesters for windows, for several good reasons, including greater homegeneity with other windows, blocking and non-blocking versions possible, dragging possible, etc. The user can benefit from a dialog that was implemented as a window instead of a requester. Such dialogs are not harder to code. So if you want to use GadTools in a dialog, use another window. No big deal. Please let MY words stand for what I think. >