AltME groups: search

instead of carring in our hown corner our little tasks it's better 
to try  to merge our knowledge that's not new GNU and other free 
software projet/foundation are doing it yet (like blender what amazing 
software ... think of it it is a very hudge project and ambisous 
(it's using PYTHON API to make script what could be done using rebol 
in blender 3D renderer software for scripting ??? ))

Blender ambition is to be better than dynosors like maya and 3DSMAX 
supported by billions of dollars ...

being simple is not only a better CPU usage but it offers too some 
rest and easy path to our totured brains ;)

Chris and I did some work on an ARROW style some time back. We'd 
like to offer it up if RebGUI can use it.

hum depending on the size if it's low sized you can put it on rebol.org 
with a comment and naming it ARROW4REBGUI.R for axample

Check and Radio-Group? AGG looks better for these than the pre-AGG 
pixelated look. The lines have more definition and weight IMHO. Can't 
see any difference with Tab-Panel and Button.

Latest build available at: http://www.dobeash.com/files/RebGUI-018.zip

Highlights include:

	- New pwd-field widget
	- Updated tab-panel & radio-group widgets
	- Timer widget removed
	- Added Ctrl+Left & Ctrl+Right (word left / right) to edit feel
	- Display User's Guide updated to reflect previous changes
	- Menu widget and tabbing deferred until 0.1.9


Note that face edge, font, para and feel now default to none. Use 
default-* objects if your widgets need these attributes (this brings 
these attributes in line with the RebGUI philosophy of "absent unless 
specified"; and removes all the attribute: none assignments).

Ashley, it would be really interesting to learn why you decided to 
write RebGUI and how you went about doing it. It would make a great 
article for Rebol.org.

My post of 2-Mar-2005 in the View group which kicked things off:


Which leads (sort of) to my next question. Does anyone think it is 
worth developing a simple, high-performance, low-memory GUI alternative 
to VID? The aim would be to have it built on View from the ground 
up such that you could (for example) use enface / rebface (or equivalent) 
without needing %view.r (and the over 120 KB of mezz it pulls in). 
If there's sufficient interest I'll document and release the Alpha 
implementation I have.


I'll jot down a few notes for an article before I forget too many 
of my streams of thought. ;)

Well  In fact I figured out there was lot of problems with my first 
 port of the arrow and arw widgets made by Chris & Gregg  initialy 
for VID/AGG. So now it's mutch better I solve all existing problems 
in my first implementation.  I made lot  of code cleaning. I let 
implementation samples in commentary and comments maide by initial 
authors ;). Can be found here: http://shadwolf.Free.fr/arrow-RebGUI-port.r

is there a one-liner I can type on rebol console I can use to see 
something built with rebGUI. just curious how it looks and feels...

Last thing the pointer is slow on hudge text because of this F***King 
mad system base on caret  to handle the cursor position you store 
the current text that belongs after the cursor Writing and rewriting 
every time into this caret buffer the most part of the document is 
super slow  !!!

Latest build available at: http://www.dobeash.com/files/RebGUI-019.zip

Highlights include:


 - Integrated language localization (see http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/locale.html)
	- New arrow widget (run %arrow.r to see it in action)
	- Use of as-pair
	- Minor updates to pwd-field
	- title-group simplified

Known issues


 - radio-group fails under 1.2.1 and rebface 1.2.10 (but not view 
 oddly enough). Comment / uncomment radio-group block under %tour.r 
 to see.
	- Need a "safe" implementation of 'construct for 1.2.1

hi. .. how is localisation done, pleae? Is there anything like default 
language set? And what precisely is localised?

and why arrows are not integrated ? arrow are usefull for drop-down, 
slider, and notepad for example on tour.r as the window is resizabe 
that when the buton bar is (number of buttons) are more big than 
the window to have two arrow to scroll the buttons bar to acces to 
the unviable button and to indicate to the user that the button bar 
of the note pad is bigger than he can see

Pekr: It's all explained in http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/locale.html


Brock: radio-group does this already (set of mutually exclusive choices) 
and I was contemplating a check-group widget which uses the data 
attribute to store a block containing state information for each 
check-box in the group.


shadwolf: menu and tabbing are still WIP. The arrow widget is integrated 
into %widgets.r, I just ran out of room (> 1024 pixel width) with 
the current %tour.r. Once the scroller and spinner widgets are complete 
I'll redo %tour.r breaking it down into sub-widget categories (the 
real solution is to enhance the tab-panel widget but one thing at 
a time).

ashley it could be cool to add 2 arrows left and right in the notepad 
header (where you have the buttons to open the panels of the notepad) 
when they  are hided because the size of the window is smaller than 
the needed

Brock: validation is also on my ToDo list (you can see the beginnings 
of it in the field widget character length limits). A couple of questions 
though (both how it is done in .Net and how it *should* be done in 
RebGUI):

	What's the granularity of the validation?

 Does it allow the specification of a mask (e.g. for phone numbers)?

 Is it validated as I type, when I leave the field, or when I save 
 the form? (Or is it flexible enough to let me choose the level of 
 validation?)


shadwolf: Haven't really thought about it much, but I figured the 
tab-panel redraw feel was a logical place to do the work.

Proposal: IMHO, it would be better to use the VID convention for 
auto-size: negative size -> auto-size

as 9999 can lead to weird errors and crashs, if someone set dimensions 
to 999x999, or worst 99999x99999 .

...and 10k screen size isn't that improbable (the size of a virtual 
screen can be that big!)

The "+" version of as-pair has fixed all the 1.2.1 crashes (and got 
rid of a few 1.2.1 specific work arounds).

Thanks for the link ... that and some testing has convinced me to 
remove the 'show redefine from the next build.

Well I'm going to sleep :)  I have 2 bugs with current implementation 
1) clicking into the panel arrow is not possibe ... 2)  header button 
countainer and sub countainer have the 100x100 size ...

Ashley: I posted to you in private my l	astest code.  visualisation 
of the arrows and scoll of the header buttons is done

and lot of information of what I done and how :)

Excellent Shadwolf. Glad to see things are still active and progressing 
on this. I wish I weren't so busy at the moment, and I hope the community 
will help to make RebGUI a model for future projects.

Alpha2 build available at: http://www.dobeash.com/files/RebGUI-020.zip

Highlights include:


 - New, unit based sizing model (see http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.html)

 - Improved language localization (see http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/locale.html)

 - New arrow, chevron, check-group, led-group, scroller, spinner and 
 drop-list widgets
	- Lots of minor fixes
	- show redefine removed
	- Use of -1 instead of 9999 to denote auto-size
	- Aesthetic improvements (use of gradients)
	- %tour.r substantially rewritten

Known issues

	- spinner and drop-list widgets need more work
	- scroller needs more work (resizeable dragger)

In progress

	- Improved tab-panel (shadwolf)
	- Menu (cyphre / shadwolf)
	- tabbing
	- field input validation (field input masks, etc)

That leaves less than half a dozen widgets to go!

	list		single column
	listview	multi-column
	treeview
	popup-menu	context menu
	status		status bar with one or more “segments”

Great stuff!! One question WRT fields uses in specification and runtime, 
for example LED-Group. Is it possible to alter the led-group content? 
Adding or removing possible entries in it? Or is this a one-time 
action when the widget initializes?

resizing system: How about a method that will store the layout if 
altered by the user and reload the GUI in the same layout? It always 
drives me nuts if I have to resize application splitter bars, panes 
etc. when starting again.

Known issues

	- spinner and drop-list widgets need more work

to allow him interger it and ptimize it

I will made maybe a merge betwin cyphre my-list and Claude table 
widgets first because Table is twice biger in code than my-list and 
second because some fonctionnality interresting in table made by 
claude.

Robert: LED-Group attributes can be changed at runtime with:

	led-handler/pane/2/data: true
	led-handler/pane/2/text: "Test"
	show led-handler


but the specification (number of LEDs and orientation) is fixed at 
specification time. I have no plans to change this.


Pekr: Most folks are familiar with WinXP, it is something to model. 
The basic RebGUI color scheme is controlled by less than a dozen 
words, and arrow / chevron / other is fully inheritable; but the 
"look" (e.g. tab shape and active shading) is hard-coded in most 
cases. So the answer is that you can easily change the cosmetic aspects 
of the UI but not the fundamentals.

Gregg: known issue.


Volker: Not sure which way you mean. If you want to contribute new 
widgets that work with both VID and RebGUI then I'll be spending 
time optimizing them for RebGUI which will break their VID compatibility. 
If you mean that you want to make the RebGUI widgets work under VID 
then feel free to do so with the widgets I have authored. For other 
widgets, please contact their author(s).

Ashley: changing RebGUI and vid sothat styles are interchangeable.

i hope. after all, both create faces. thee are a few differences 
in your api (action has 2 arguments, init is function). and you have 
a resize-system. will look what i can do. at least something like 
  vid[ vid-stuff ] ; symply calls 'layout
should be doable.

btw is the verbose dialect by design or to keep parser short. i guess 
i could do some automatic with few lines overhead. to allow strings 
and actions without the extra brackets.

By design, to keep it as simple (and efficient) as possible. I'm 
open to a more VID-like parse-based approach as long as the complexity 
/ efficiency doesn't blow out as a result.

Thanks, I've had the code lying around for ages and was trying to 
find a link (for attribution purposes) the other day. ;)

I remember when /view first came out it seemed there was someone 
that made a gui that was eliptical using only faces and no layout.

* Vertacal and Horizontal scrollers management
* Header rendering
* Column content resizing management (internal & external)

* Line Selection with a filled fill (not sure of the wanted way to 
make this work ...)
* Inseting rows 
* Deleting rows

* More widgets support (for the moment I can handle images checks 
and texts)

TODO: 
* Vertacal and Horizontal scrollers management
* Column content resizing management (internal & external)

* Line Selection with a filled fill (not sure of the wanted way to 
make this work ...)
* Inseting rows 
* Deleting rows

* More widgets support (for the moment I can handle images checks 
and texts)

Latest build available at: http://www.dobeash.com/files/RebGUI-021.zip

Highlights include:

	- Specification dialect is now VID compatible (and 35% slower)
	- request-color and request-date added
	- Span attribute changed from tuple to issue
	- Couple of minor fixes
	- %tour.r has an additional "Requestors" tab


I wanted to get this build out before folks went too far down the 
converting from VID to RebGUI and vice versa path. If a parse expert 
(I'm not one) could suggest performance improvements for the main 
display parse loop that would be great.

speed: Ashley, the parse spec looks very much like a degenerated 
'switch statement to me. You are not doing anything wild that requires 
parse. Have you tried to loop through the spec block and use a switch 
statement instead? It might require a bit state handling but could 
be faster.

Robert, not that simple : we have selection on both datatypes and 
keywords, with optional parameter of various datatypes. The 'switch 
wouldn't be trivial

There is a room for improvements in the parse loop, as a set-word! 
is always followed by a word!, and file!, string!, issue! (and others) 
are never alone.

the datatypes are unique. Each on only shows up once. I don't see 
any optional parameters. The parameters can either be of type A or 
B, ok. But that can be handled in the action block of the matching 
switch. And there we can reposition the spec block to skip those 
handled cases.

I figured out a little problem when I ste up the scrolling has the 
header and is in the same countainer as the column and row scrooling 
make desapear the header buttons :)

Robert: on switch version : trying - but some difficulties. A rebgui 
declaration is of kind :
any [ global-parameter | global-parameter-with-arg argument | 

         opt set-word! word! any [integer! | pair! | ...  | keyword [integer! 
         | pair! | ...] ] ]

the problem with that is a) the optional set-word!, b) for widgets, 
both values and keyword/values are allowed

with 'switch it's far less readable (for arguments, we have to separate 
keywords and datatypes and use "switch/default [] [swtich []]"), 
and takes more code

parse loop in display.r needs some work, as a lot of wrong combinaisons 
are allowed like [s: 10x20 #1010 button] and not easy to trap.

tuning parse: first thing would be to put the frequent things first. 
like string! and block!. and soemthing like 'rate last. if parse 
is the slowdown.

I remake another time the buil-table function for the listview widgets 
( acording to Ashley  advices) build code is pretty easier to understand 
and the buildtime spend in the fonction is pretty inferrior than 
in the previous implementation (on an other data organasation ) rebgui-list2.r 
build-table time is 0.047 with regui-list3.r it's 0.31 (both  with 
data countaining 5cols  100rows on a PC ( win2k SP4, Amd sempron 
2600+, SDRAMM DRR PC3200) )

According to ashley advice the new data organisation is faster and 
it will be easier and fast for the sorting algorythm (still not implemented 
in rebgui-list3.r ;)

listview: Pretty cool :-)) Some ideas:

- add a line highligh feature for the selected line and the line 
the cursor is currently pointing to

- double clicking the column-resize bar resets the column width to 
the default value

- add an up/down arrow to the column which was used for sorting, 
to indicate sorting order

I was also thinking about the feature that was being discussed that 
allows for more tabs than the width of the layout.  How about an 
option to allow the tabs to wrap when larger than the layout?  Take 
the number of tabs, divide the total by two and auto-size the tabs 
to the full width of the layout, just now there is two rows.  I think 
this would be a nice alternative behaviour for when the user interface 
benefits from being able to see all possible tabs.

Brock yes the colonne resizing feature is planned. but I fear this 
kind of feature is speed in C/C++ and slow in rebol ...

the alternative is what cyphre does for his tabbed panel gadget .. 
which is an arrow on the right which shifts the tabs left and right

For the moment it's a prepre alpha demo to show to you what are my 
way to make it and if people find it good :)

I splitted betwin a heavy implemented listview with lot of gadgets 
events  (witch means lot of code) and  a  just what we need listview 
(first step for heavy implemented listview)

Brock datas are organised like that [ [ "title" type size (and so 
on)] [ data1 (and so on) ] ] size is not implemented yet

actually I'm writing select and retrieve function

Okay, retested .. and it is working now.

when you move a splitter this influance the left colone size and 
only change header button and all the widgets on the right size

this version includes colums left of the spliter resizing and keeping 
the right columns same size and scolling them

If you resize the 1st column, then Romano's ana-list resizes the 
1st and 2nd columns only.  The other columns stay where they are.

My only comment about that is there isn't much margin for error, 
I think the two pixel activation of the column resizing is a little 
limited and requires concentration.  In Excel, they have about 16 
pixels (approximately the full size of the mouse pointer area, not 
just the immediate selection area.

Excel 2000 resizes the column headers only in real time and not all 
the data

mutch faster but more code and a strange effect  ;)

if you collapse column 2 completely and then open it up again, you 
get extra vertical lines

I'm only on 900 MhZ machine and the resizing is real-time with my 
mouse movements.

Something I am seeing... while mouse is down and resizing, the header 
cell in the direction I am moving highlights as if I am selecting 
that cell.  When I change direction of the resize, the new column 
header cell highlights.

it's quite hard to reproduce this artifact.  And it is difficult 
to exactly select the resizing bar.

scrollers works as getting next and previous face on the same pane

and how could I manage to find the related faces on the down level 
pane ???

even faster and on mouse up the wall content is scrolled ;)

And humble too! ;~>

at this point I can only resize column 1 and not the others

for me it work even with 1.2.8.3.1 and 1.2.57e.3.1 :)

and 1.2.55.3.1

I'm developping with 1.2.57e.3.1 and no problems apear not with 1.2.10 
or 1.2.8 ...

I think I solve the bug I test with lot of VM and it work

Also, when you reduce the sizes of the columns and can see the right 
edge of column 5, you can't resize column5 - no resize bar.

column-resizing:

- after starting regui-list I see gray column seperator lines. When 
I move the mouse over the line, it's highlighted in orange and than 
becomes black when moving the mouse away. Why not gray again?

- when making a column smaler I can see the virtual new edge (in 
orange) but when making the column wider this virtual new edge isn't 
shown. Looks to me like an order issue. The virtual line needs to 
be drawn last.

line-selection:

- If a line is selected and I sort by one column the selection isn't 
keept on the same entry. The selection is keept on the same entry 
number counted from the top. That's a strange behaviour. It should 
keep the selected line.

BTW: It's a very nice widget so far :-)) Can I change the displayed 
data on the fly? For example, if I want to move lines up and down. 
How is this done?

Doc - just steal R3 alpha from Carl and you could release it in threaded 
mode :-)

He's taking care of the video and audio streaming

skype is a real beast to make work, I would have hoped Carl stepping 
in and writing a clone in 10 lines..

hmm, last week we had meeting from high school after 16 years. I 
set-up skype from Jablunkov to Dallas and video beamer in less than 
10 minutes including installation. Maybe I was just lucky (never 
used Skype before)

Sorry you missed your momenr Reichart -- and so late at night for 
you too: we were guessing 02:30 for you

I have a really cool Logitech camera that tracks faces, all seemed 
good (and I use it all the time), but this time it all froze up.

Message from the techie in the brown coat: could we all in the room 
not surf -- the bandwidth out of the building isn't up to it, and 
it may affect the video stream. 
Altme is fine though :-)

ah, so i could have continued and you'd get all the blame ;)

Tell Maxim put some small bits of negativity around, as I am not 
there and he knows how to do it too :-)

what I am supposed to use to view and hear this stream on windows??

So Reichart, cone of silence aside, how is this partnership between 
RT and Prolific going to affect future developments?

terry, i think the partnership is between safeworlds and rt, and 
safeworlds is - i think - separated from prolific. but i guess your 
question still stands.

who's talking?  and what is he talking about?

Terry: basically, Safeworlds will offer a product, AltME 3, that 
replaces View, IOS and AltMe 1. That is a product and so is more 
business targeted.

RT, instead, focuses on the language itself, and the language has 
a lot of parts that are open source.

there is no real duality between open source and corporate, anyway. 
(we're talking bsd license, not gpl)

I understand the financial aspect.. and the free market aspect.  
 Is Rebol turning into an application, more than a language the Im 
to build a company on?

Refresh worked, audio cuts in and out.