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From: vrm@blackwater.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu (Vasile R. Montan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: "The dialog manager is not a user interface" -Well, why not?
Message-ID: <1777@babcock.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu>
Date: 18 May 91 18:55:01 GMT
Sender: news@cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu
Reply-To: un020070@vaxa.wvnet.edu
Lines: 40

There is a Tech Note called "Don't abuse the managers."  This note
gives some warnings about improper use of the managers.  For example,
it says that the List Manager should only be used for fairly
small lists, because the list manager is not designed to handle
big jobs, and trying to coerce it to do so will result in
annoying delays for the user.

While the rationale for most of the warnings in this tech note
are clear to me, I don't understand the warning against using
the dialog manager for anything but dialogs with simple buttons,
static text, and editable text.  The note says that if I am doing
anything unusual, such as including a dial control, etc., I should
set up my own window and do all of the dirty work of tracking the
controls, etc., myself.

Well, I've got several reasons why I don't want to do this:
--If I'm drawing the controls myself into my own window, I will have to
hard code their locations, while with a dialog I can drag the
controls in the DITL around using ResEdit.  I suppose it would be
possible to create a DITL using ResEdit, then have my program read
it in and interpret it just as the Dialog Manager does, but this
would take a fair amount of coding which already exists in the Dialog
Manager.
--When I'm creating a new dialog, I never create it from scratch.
Instead, I take the code of one of my existing dialogs and edit
it to meet the needs of the new dialog.  Since all dialogs work
in much the same way, this is a speedy process.  If I'm writing a
long program, it seems like a waste of time to teach my buttons
to hilite.
--If there is something wrong with doing unusual things with dialogs,
then why were userItems and filter functions created to start with?
With the List Manager example above, there is a clear reason (speed)
for not abusing the manager; if I 'abuse' the dialog manager, my
code may be a bit kludgey, but how will the user ever know the
difference?

Am I way out of line?  Comments?

--Kurisuto
un020070@vaxa.wvnet.edu