Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!oliveb!pyramid!leadsv!laic!nova!darin
From: darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: More 1.4 wishes
Message-ID: <485@laic.UUCP>
Date: 21 Mar 89 20:19:56 GMT
References: <6269@abo.fi>
Sender: news@laic.UUCP
Reply-To: darin@nova.UUCP (Darin Johnson)
Organization: Lockheed AI Center, Menlo Park
Lines: 47

In article <6269@abo.fi> rosenbergr@abo.fi (Robin Rosenberg, Computer Science, ]bo Akademi) writes:
>Repeating gadgets: A gadgetype that would fire intuition messages as long as
>		   it is selected. This could be similarily to INTUITICKS
>		   in that no new messages are sent unless the previous
>		   message has bee Reply()'ed. Ok. Not a gadget type but
>		   a flag for all gadget types for which this is meaningful.

A useful addition, I agree (good for scroll bars).  It can be done without
this addition though.  For example, when the scroll bar arrow is selected
(gadgetdown), set a flag.  Then everytime you see an intuiticks message,
check the flag.  If it was set, pretend the user clicked again.  You can
also modify things so that it only works 1ce per second, etc.  However, this
doesn't fit 'cleanly' into a wait/get/process loop.

>Gadget release:	   A message that the user released the button even if the
>		   pointer wasn't positioned over the select box when he/she
>		   did so.

Similarly, you could check for a mouse up event, and then check to see what
the last select down was.  I can't think of much of a use for it, except
that it matches menunull.  Perhaps, if you had a "reset and clear all data"
gadget, then if the user selected it, and then moved the mouse outside and
released it, you could pop up a requester that said "You chicken!".

I think the 1.4 designers will have to decide what features are
'necessary' based on how much coding, code space, etc it will save vs.
how much work, library space is used adding these features.  Right
now, Intuition is a nice "medium level" interface.  X is low level,
SunTools is high level.  Widgets in X move higher up the scale,
without changing the base interface.

Perhaps a new toolkit library (link or share) could be used, letting
Intuition handle the important stuff, with the toolkit adding pop-up
menus, automatic scrollbars, file requesters, etc.  As a shared
library, it has drawbacks, since everyone will want to put something
in and there'll never be a stable version.  More useful would be set
of routines in C, assembler, etc. that do these things (although it
would be an imposition to have Commodore be the clearing house for
this). 

I haven't thought too long on this, but another useful library would
be something to allow you to define your own functions, attach them as
handler, and then the library would preprocess the intuimessages,
possibly returning a user defined message.

Darin Johnson (leadsv!laic!darin@pyramid.pyramid.com)
	Can you "Spot the Looney"?