World: r3wp

http://polly.rebol.it/test/test/rebgui/download.rscrolls. Slider 
is not updated. but i prefer scroll-as-you-type.

hmm, what is the problem with slider? would we have to have something 
like hook to edit function and by each keypress to examine if we 
should redraw sliders? sounds complicated and would be slow probably?

IIRC there is some automatic in rebgui. but that automatic changes 
the text-offset back when the edit-function changes it.

SO while patching i guess i disabled it.

0.3.9 is out and it has a lot of fixes / enhancements. From a REBOL/View 
console:

	do http://www.dobeash.com/get-rebgui.r
	do view-root/public/www.dobeash.com/RebGUI/tour.r


The dictionary file has been removed from the distribution and the 
download path has been changed from:

	www.dobeash.com/files/rebgui -> www.dobeash.com/RebGUI


so you may want to delete view-root/public/www.dobeash.com in its 
entirety first to clean things up.


In addition to the large number of fixes ( http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/issues.html#section-2.2
), a number of enhancements are documented here:

	http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.html#section-2.1.7
	http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.html#section-3.2.4
	http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.html#section-3.2.5
	http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.html#section-5.20

Also note the following:

	view-face is now activate-on-show by default

 Added a request-password requestor (its password widget problems 
 are known issues)
	group-box and tab-panel now auto-size

 Table column headings are now always left aligned and clicking the 
 arrow works

 Added an 'effects context (only window is present, but others like 
 'button, 'check, etc may be added in future)


And lastly, you will notice that %tour.r has a new "Appearance" tab 
where you can dynamically alter RebGUI's metrics, colors and effects. 
Note that some colors are still "hard-bound" at context creation 
and won't change - these will be made dynamic (via a set-colors func?) 
in the future. Apart from showing off RebGUI's dynamic scaling and 
display abilities, this lets you more easily prototype a unique look 
for your own apps if you want, and if you come up with a set of options 
that is truly fantastic then share it here and it may just become 
the new RebGUI default.

Enjoy!

Ashley, pretty neat on how you can dynamically change the appearance.

I note that the area box still has the same problems with the cursor 
jumping from the middle of a paragraph when word wrapping to the 
bottom of the screen.

I note requesters can now be dismissed with the escape key, but can 
keycode shortcuts be used for Yes and Now ?

Using CTRL+A in list doesn't mark all entries.

as usual great work ^^

can keycode shortcuts be used for Yes and Now

 ... I was going to map Enter to OK / Yes and just leave ESC mapping 
 to Close / Cancel / No. What keycodes were you thinking of ("Y" and 
 "N"?).

CTRL+A in list doesn't mark all entries
 ... good spot, I'll add it to the list.

Yes and No as well as Enter and Esc would be good.

Widget Designer's Guide updated: http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/widgets.html

Good stuff, especially the optimization section. I see a lot of potential 
in my code :-))

Is there a way that we can add a RebGUI "verifier" that will check 
the use of VID words, etc.? IMO a good help.

For SDK users; rebface.exe, then:

do %path/gfx-colors.r
do %path/gfx-funcs.r
do %tour.r

So, it's simple to encap. That's good.

Haven't tried it yet.

Is there a simple way how we could seperate GUI code from application 
code, so that the application code can be used by a web-frontend 
as well? I just want to avoid to code things two-times.

Depends. You can structure your code so that all the displays are 
in one file and all the business rules / data / action logic in another 
by coding like this:

display "Test" compose/only [
	button (app/labels/save) (app/actions/save)
	drop-list data (app/options/save)
]


and using references to face (and face/parent-face) within your actions. 
This approach achieves a couple of things:

	1) Separation of display from process

 2) code / data reuse (i.e. you can share data / action blocks across 
 multiple displays)

 3) Can reduce the amount of code that is composed as app data / logic 
 can be composed independently of the display
	4) Code is more portable (as face references are generic)
	5) Probably easier to maintain and debug

Problems with this approach are:


 1) "f: field" is easier to reference than "face/parent-face/pane/2" 
 etc
	2) You have to really think about how you structure your code
	3) It's very different from the way we are used to (VID)

a thought: how about adding to vars instead of setting them? i imagine

 bt: context[rebgui: none cgi: none fill: [true] action: [alert value] 
 my-stuff: ..]
 display .. [
  bt: button
 ]
and now display would put its face in bt/rebgui

Sounds interesting.

My idea is to decouple it with one indirection. I have one GUI-action 
block, that collects all data from the GUI objects, creates a block/object 
and passes this further for processing. The CGI part, would collect 
all data from the CGI object and passes this further for processing. 
To the same function as the GUI.

Ashley, can we please add a way to display to either specify a starting 
size of the window that's not maximized. I want my app started with 
a size of 1024x768

Is there a way to re-use widgets like done with 'style in VID? For 
exampel: I have a drop-list specification, I need at several places 
but I don't want to copy the code. I tried it use a (my-drop-list) 
compose word but this doesn't work.

label-size etc.: If this was set in an outer object, the value should 
be used for group-box as well.

triggers: It seems that a on-unfocus function of a field is called 
even when I only switch tabs in a tab-panel.

triggers: This seems to be problem, if a RebGUI app is closed to 
the command line and than restarted. Seems like the triggers are 
somehow still active than.

Robert: "Using CTRL+A in list doesn't mark all entries." It does 
work, but only in "multi" mode. ;)

Ok, than it might be the help text on screen that has a bug ;-))

Note: 

Single" allows one row at a time to be selected, whilst "Multi" supports 
multi-row selection via Ctrl+click, Shift+click and Ctrl+A keystrokes." 
... how could this be any clearer? ;)

I know... IIRC (haven't cross checked) in tour the text says "try 
CTRL+A to selct all..." but it's a single tabel shown. So, I thought 
it's not working.

RebGUI goes Beta! With the fixing of some long running area / scroll 
/ slider bugs I've finally reached a stable enough release candidate 
for 0.4.0 Beta; so, from a REBOL/View console:

	do http://www.dobeash.com/get-rebgui.r
	do view-root/public/www.dobeash.com/RebGUI/tour.r


Also note that the demo directory includes a nifty new pie-chart 
widget demo (thanks Robert).


I've also separated the 0.3.x and 0.4.x issues into separate sections: 
http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/issues.html#section-2.3

Changes in this release include:


 Scrolling fixed (all area scroll / slider problems should be fixed, 
 and a couple of minor field scrolling issues were also fixed)

 set-locale function to dynamically change locale files / dictionaries
	pie-chart widget added

 slider width reduced by 1/5 for area, table, text-list, drop-list, 
 edit-list (looks better)

 table column arrows made smaller and darkened, plus right-most arrow 
 moved to table boundary (more space for column heading text)


and an important one from 0.3.9 that I omitted to mention last release:


 drop-list / edit-list now size to the smaller of number of items 
 or available space in the bounding parent face (so no more lists 
 that disappear off the edge of a face / window)

Enjoy!

Great stuff as always.

oh, I want to play with this, but no time :-(

ashley, LIST-VIEW may soon be at a point where it'll become portable, 
i.e. no big structural changes are coming

Area widget  looking great!

If it passes the "Graham test" then it might just finally be fixed! 
;)  (Who would of thought it could take over 8 hours to get a dozen 
lines or so of scroll and area redraw code correct!!!)

Tough problem - quality is not quantity!

I can make a start now at rolling the new version of RebGUI into 
my EMR finally.

Ashley, just noticed something for the Text-List when in multi mode. 
 Ctrl-clicking shows each element in the list is highlighted as clicked 
and the associated text is displayed in the Month display field. 
  however, selecting CTRL-A does not display all the months in the 
Month display field while it does highlight all the months.

Ctrl-clicking all individually shows all values in the Month display 
area.

selecting a few with Ctrl-click, then selecting all, then Ctrl-clicking 
on one to remove it from the selection then shows all but the un-selected 
item... Seems Ctrl-click should be showing all months.

tour.r uses the text-list as follows:


 ex-text-list: text-list (tab-size - 70x25) #HW data (system/locale/months) 
 [
		show-text ex-text-list-text face/selected
	]


so the action (showing currently selected months) is only fired on 
a left-mouse click (single or double). The interesting design question 
here is whether CTRL-A *should also* fire the widget's action? I'm 
open to suggestions on this one. ;)

I think so. It's a "selection action" rather than a "click action". 
The click is a way to achieve a selection, and so is the ctrl-A.

but if the event depends on what is selected ?

ie. what is appropriate for one select may not be for multiple selects.

The action code can merely examine the current selection.

oh no! the user has to write more code to handle that!

In multi mode, the user code can't avoid having to check face/selected 
to see what is in it.

Fixed in one line:

	if find face/options 'multi [
		clear face/picked
		repeat i face/rows [insert tail face/picked i]
		face/action face ; added
	]


works well, with the face being the row last clicked on. %tour.r 
works without modification.