AltME groups: search

I've also added a simple text-list widget (Robert) and fixed the 
strange table render problem (which you can see be increasing the 
horizontal width of the window *before* going to the "Table" tab 
for the first time).

Yes, even has a scroller. It is a much simpler widget than table 
(being only one column).

Anyway, my pet peeve is not being able to use the space bar to activate 
an "okay" button on a rebol requester.

How about an ok-button which has "Space" and "Return" keys mapped 
to it (assuming nothing else has focus), and a cancel-button / close-button 
widget which has "ESC" mapped to it (assuming nothing else has focus)?

ashkey: are you using show-popup and hide-popup? if so, just use 
the /away refinement, and don't provide a custom feel (so that the 
default one is used).

ctrl is a separate field of the ecent

and - why is better keyboard handler a problem?

1) no, that's a hw problem most of the times 2) rebol does not operate 
at such a low level.

Gabriele - I don't believe you somehow :-), sorry, I mean it in a 
good :-)

Latest build available at: http://www.dobeash.com/files/RebGUI-030.zip


*** Note that this version requires View 1.2.124 or later, and that 
the zip file is unusually large (346Kb) as it includes a dictionary 
file (future builds wont). ***

Highlights include:

	- New language, dictionary and spellcheck functionality added

 - Documentation on above at: http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/edit.html#section-4
	- All objects merged into one context
	- Major code reorganization / restructure
	- Reduced number of global words to 11
	- Pre-0.3.0 comments removed
	- Pre View 1.2.124 code removed
	- New text-list widget added
	- Added show-color accessor function

 - rebface and rebfocus synonyms to avoid collision with face / focus
	- Large number of bug fixes
	- http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/roadmap.htmlupdated

Known issues:


 - edit feel needs to support tab / shift+tab into and out of "grouping" 
 widgets

 - cursor down goes to end of text instead of next line?! (yell if 
 you know the answer as I'm stumped on this one)
	- focus

 - edit-list / drop-list should use show-popup/away (some compatibility 
 problems)

On the drawing board

	- area widget needs a scroller added to it by default
	- field format / validation masks
	- menu widget
	- better keyboard navigation / focus

getting keys instead of characters means a lot of new work to do, 
and i don't see much reason for rebol to do so, except for games. 
but, games will need much more than that!

ashley: testing RebGUI-030. When I click a tab in the big pane and 
then click the last pane in the sub-pane, it sometimes crashes to 
console

hang on, I didn't try it on a fresh rebol console....

yes... but a different error: go to spinner tab, click the buttons 
on the spinner a few times. go to another tab in the same group and 
back to the spinner tab again. then click inside the text field of 
the spinner

Couldn't behavior of list be changed a bit? Maybe we are near? Menu/list 
should not definitely automatically hide, when you move mouse away, 
but it should hid, once you click outside. That is default and imo 
cross-platform. I wonder if we can achieve that?

password field - just a cosmetic issue, but those "asterisks" don't 
look nice here - way too-much pressed one to each other ...

1) menu / list behaviour - will change once I iron out a few popup/away 
compatibility issues; it will then work as expected and the quirks 
it has now (as Graham discovered) should finally be fixed.
2) text-list highlight - noted

3) table - needs further work, but getting row selection working 
is a priority

4) leds - thanks to Pascal Lefevre for the original concept and Christian 
Ensel for the latest change
5) password - agreed

6) spinner - agreed. Before I spend any time on this one, how relevant 
 are spinners to today's UIs? I can't recall *ever* seeing one used 
in any project I've been in. Any strong objections if it's ditched?

works so I don't see  a problem to initialise the spiner using now/date

this would be a quick complement for scheduler based application

is the spinner supposed to have a reset back shortcut as well?

request-date give you a hudge over see spinner date give you a close 
contrôle for short time periode since now/date

for example Image I'm a commercial I need to set for tomorow a schedule 
with some client what would be grphically better for me ? click add 
button and then select the date user request date or Click Add button 
then use spinner to select the proper date and time and enter an 
entry to the topic field :)

Now I'm still a commercial but this time I plan a tour to East America 
in several town with several client and this trip is planned for 
2 - 3 month since now. What would be perefable use a spinner based 
interface or use a resquest date based interface

and the programmer must be able to set the starting data (used too 
to set the data type) set the increm/decrem value and set a max limit 
;)

Ashley, I am not sure I like name of rebface. I think it would be 
better just as face (ctx-rebgui/face). I don't see the need to distinguish 
so much from standard View face. Indeed, I think it will make porting 
code a little slower.

I have a working SLIDER with proportional dragger and page clicking.

I am thinking of integrating arrows as options in the slider. This 
means a scroller would just be a slider with the arrows option. But 
this violates the rebgui principle of each widget being self-contained. 
However, the case for code reuse here is very strong, and so I want 
to do it. Any comments on that ?

If you do decide to integrate arrows in the slider, I hope you have 
a "smart'" arrow option like the one the one that Mac OS has provided 
since OS 8.6.

It's a big improvement on the standard up arrow at the top, down 
arrow at the bottom.

Anton, rebface word only comes into play during widget creation; 
all other references to face (e.g. feel, focus, etc) have not changed. 
In fact, that was one of my motivations for introducing it ... I've 
seen far too many people tripped up by code like the following:

	engage: func [face action pos] [
		...
		insert tail blk make face [
			...
		]
		...
	]


where the "make face" should have been "make system/standard/face". 
When a RebGUI widget refers to rebface it is now unambiguous that 
we are not referring to a face argument nor the global face.


Looking at your demo slider now. If slider / scroller can be combined 
without a net increase in code size then I'm all for it as they are 
functionally and stylistically similar (vsplitter and hsplitter were 
combined into splitter for much the same reasons quite a while back).

About spinner, why not introducing a drop-scroller style.

It looks like a drop-list (right arrow), but while clicking, an horizontal 
scroller appear under the field. You can use arrows to up/down or 
scroll bar to go fast or to the top/bottom limit.

Just took a look at Tour.r again.  I must say I'm amazed!  this is 
really good work!

and could be even better if we have a largest use of draw/AGG for 
menu popup scroll down animation

WRT Spinner, I prefer three buttons, Up, Down, and a middle button 
the pops up slider like DideC suggested...

Yes, that can be a problem at times but they've always worked pretty 
well for me...

now AGG it's official and it would be very cool to use it lightly 
but cleverly to make a sharpen and diferenciable set of widget ...

AGG is fine, but is for rendering something in a face.

You can imagine having only one face and drawing all the UI with 
Draw commands, but you will need to put a BIIIIIIIIIIG function in 
window-feel to handle all the user inputs  at different xy mouse 
positions !!

What I dislike in "current" release (1.3) is that there is two rendering 
engine: one for 'effect and one for 'draw. So you have capabilities 
(ie: better alphachannel handling) with Draw that you don't get with 
'effect.
So to make a more than 2 colors gradient, you need Draw.
I hope that 1.4 will fix that

yes but maybe that's due to a background need

Anton: no harm in using do-face, but "face/action face" is usually 
enough. I chose rebface (even though it is an SDK component name) 
as it is consistent with rebfocus and any other VID words I need 
to redefine. I didn't want a proliferation of rebgui-* function names. 
On the other hand, it's a lot easier to rename rebface / rebfocus, 
etc than the original face to rebface change! ;)

maybe we should think about a name change? rebface looks a lot like 
"the face inbuild in rebol." rebgui works as "a gui for rebol", but 
rebface?

Ashley: How about adding a main link to each rebgui document to go 
back to start page of RebGUI.

Perk the translucent window capability is anOS feature that I request 
since lot of time but the key point is that this function is only 
accessible for some OS and for Linux it's a enligntenement layer 
(doesn't work with other X11 based windows manager ) example eterm 
is translucent but works only with enligtenment windows manager (the 
ones that comes with gnome )

in a short time the Windows REBOL/View will need to adapt to the 
need WinFX library that will replace Win32 API starting from LongHorn 
so VID  back ground will need to change ... Maybe this could open 
to the WinFX/Avalon 3D design capability directly from VID

Is there a way to initiate an action on clicking specific tabs of 
the tab panel?

forinstance, if the data for a panel is held by a database, and I 
want to update it as that tab is selected ...

... which I thought should speed it up and make it easier to iterate 
in a list.

It has a small visual bug, which does not affect the functionality; 
the end of the dragger sometimes is drawn a pixel too far. I think 
it is a floating-point error somewhere, the trapping of which I don't 
have much experience in...

The reason is there's no easy way for a rebol script such as this 
to install rebgui from the zipped distribution.

I could handle it by keeping a distribution of rebgui on my site, 
unpacked.

... but we want .zip, right? Many product do support that - e.g. 
skin-packs for WinAmp do. And Windows can treat .zips as a directory 
natively, as well as Total Commander etc. Our users do not know they 
even use .zip archiver - they simply go into "directory". Compress/decompress 
is much LESS usefull.

But it is better for Ashley to maintain a nice convention.

sorry I get a computer crash and I does see that it was yet posted 
to altme

Ashley, text is a bit of an experiment to see where it can go. It 
was easy to add. I wanted to use it in the demo to place some text 
on each slider. It *could* be useful as a hover-over informative 
text (like tooltips) option.

Anton I put a modified version to your slider-demo code into my FTP 
and into the On cooking page ;)

My FTP is a jerk ... it doesn't work

I don't get the point ...  people that work on a widget of rebgui 
must be noticed to the public  ;)

this is usefull for us too to know how many people work on a widget 
and what was the role of every intervenent

As I say this table about on cooking widgets is like a summary of 
the in progress work ;)

we all know that the most of the work was done by ashley our intervention 
is most a support one (well in listview it's 100%  my own code ... 
 but that the only one and it's not ended it lot to bet that AShley 
will adapt it befor intergring it to rebgui  :))

re: check actions - by omission; fixed in next build. I've also updated 
the roadmap to include a link to the RebolFrance Wiki (shadwolf) 
and a link back to the RebGUI Home page (Robert).

i have a problem with the size of an image

a sample code to illustrate it

sorry for my english (i'm a french reboler)

With regards to the image size problem, try adding "effect: 'fit" 
to your make image code. Also, it's probably easier to make the image 
directly from a face, as in:

	insert tail pane make ctx-rebgui/rebface [
		offset:	0x0
		size:	as-pair tmp-sze/x 30
		image:	img-barre
		edge:	ctx-rebgui/widgets/default-edge
		effect:	'fit
	]

http://www.lexicon.net/antonr/rebol/doc/create-a-rebgui-widget.r

http://www.lexicon.net/antonr/rebol/doc/create-a-rebgui-widget.html

Good introductory doc BTW, I've added a link to it from the RebGUI 
Home page already. ;)

Hi. I 've had a look at REBGUI and it looks terrific!

I think I'll add a recycle to that display timer just to avoid confusion 
...

Ashley, slider seems ready to integrate to me. I feel I can let it 
go for a while and work on something else.

Ashley, I just fixed a small resizing bug. Not a show stopper, but 
there is a new version anyway.

anton: Can you take a look at the autocomplete style for me, after 
doing pair-edit you will be more in tune than me.

Where's the cooking-widgets page?  I get a 404 when I go to rebolfrance.org 
and use the link there...

Latest build available at: http://www.dobeash.com/files/RebGUI-031.zip


*** Unzip this file into your existing RebGUI 0.3.0 distribution. 
Requires View 1.3. ***

Highlights include:


 - Replaced scroller & slider widgets with Anton's new combined slider
	- Updated widgets to use same and set dragger size
	- Tab-panel now accepts actions (to enable dynamic tab displays)
	- Improved text-list selection logic
	- Prototype request-dir function added (needs a lot more work)
	- Large number of bug fixes
	- http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.htmlupdated

Known issues:

	Unchanged.

On the drawing board

	Unchanged.

ok, now it exists :-) ashley, language seems easy, so I'm gonna write 
a Danish language file for you

I get the same error.  A quick hack is to add this before the last 
line in rebgui-widgets.r:

Maybe it's something to do with being inside a tab panel. I will 
investigate.

There is also a problem with   slider-face/color: colors/widget  
 which is the same as tab-panel's background color. I tend to think 
that is an inherent problem with tab-panel, it being a container 
for other widgets.

Sorry guys, my fault for the confusion as I forgot to include the 
modified %tour.r. I've refreshed the zip with a "b" suffix to avoid 
any caching issues, and added Anton's fix as above:

	http://www.dobeash.com/files/RebGUI-031b.zip

Geat the thing is that people will use it in a test mean then have 
readme.txt and found lot tips to where to find more documentation 
and samples

like the initial intro. on what rebgui is..as oppose to 'why NOT 
VID'

a very clear focus of rebgui purpose

I think that's more a joke than a real lite motiv ....

RebGUI intents to extant and embeter VID but it's obviously a layer 
over VID ;)

I can CTRL+A and CTRL+C to get password field.

Just wondering whether the tab in a tab panel should perform it's 
associated action each time it is clicked as opposed to the current 
behaviour.

In this way, it differs from the action of a button.

But it does perform its action each time it is clicked ... *unless* 
it is already "active" (i.e. we ignore clicks on the currently active 
tab). If the intent / desire is to have a "refresh" type ability 
then specifying a button for that tab (which calls the action) is 
probably the better way to go.

ie. ordinarily, the programmer is trying to save a few cpu cycles 
by doing nothing when the user clicks again on the current tab.  
But if the tab already has an active action associated with it, might 
as execute it. Otherwise, the programmer has to use up valuable display 
space by adding another button, or the user has to click on another 
tab, just so that they can click on the first tab they originally 
wanted to click upon.

You're forgetting the, "Oops, I didn't mean to click that again / 
twice" factor. ;) Also, how often [in windows] does clicking an active 
tab refresh it's contents? I can't think of any off-hand. I'm not 
saying it's a bad idea, just how familiar would most folks be with 
it.

A simple image-based button replacement. Thoughts?

(as a comment on Ashley's code)

Anton

 1) Code size. What it loses in code size it gains in aesthetics and 
 simplified behaviour (check out the request-color and request-date 
 actions in %tour.r to see the extra "state" code required by the 
 original implementation). I like Brian's base64 solution.

 2) Tab-panel color: I've based this on the WinXP color scheme. Try 
 changing it to colors/window, it just doesn't look right. But slider 
 can be used on a colors/widget or colors/window background. WinXP 
 solves this by using a gradient / edge so that it is distinguishable 
 on either. So for RebGUI, a number of solutions are possible:

  - add a new colors/slider background that "works" with both widget 
  and windows background colors

  - add a new colors/tab-panel background that "works" with both widget 
  and windows background colors

  - use an effect like gradient to distinguish the slider background 
  color
		- or edge
		- or?
	I'm open to suggestions on this one. ;)

Brian
	1) I like the in-line image solution

 2) I like the base 64 solution even better! One problem, the button-down 
 image renders the same as button-up (i.e. 1st and 2nd images render 
 the same ... even though a quick glance at the data suggests they 
 are different?)

Graham
	Any examples where the desired behaviour is used?

shadwolf

 I did the same (replaced scroller call with "slider data [arrows]") 
 for text-list / table and it worked fine for me. Check for code that 
 tried to reference sub-faces in the old scroller widget (as Anton 
 refactored slider to use just one face).

Ashley, I just ran the data section in View and then did a mold/all 
on the data to get the first version and wrote it to the clipboard 
and pasted it in a text editor. I copied the binary sections to a 
block and then ran a: "" foreach x data [append a rejoin ["64#{" 
enbase/base x 64 "}"]] , and then wrote a to the clipboard and edited 
in the #[image! ... specs into the resulting data. I may have missed 
a step, or there may have been duplicate images in the source data. 
The process could be automated easily though.

Given it's a one-line change, I'll include it in the next build bar 
any strong objections.

Active tab refreshing: with regards to user experience, I'm with 
Ashley, but with regards to simpler implementation that gives the 
user (the developer using the widget or the end-user) a choice how 
to deal with the event, I'm with Graham. Either way, I don't think 
people are going to lose too much sleep over this one. If I was using 
tab-panels, I would probably try to catch redundant refreshes, if 
my refreshes were slow, whether the current implementation catches 
them for me or not, in order to be safe with possibly future implementations. 
:)

Ashley, colors/widget used by tab-panel:  I still think it is an 
inherent problem of tab-panel, but it is better I pursue one of the 
other ways you suggested, which probably needs doing anyway. It's 
easier for me to change the slider than for you to change the tab-panel 
colour, which affects more widgets.  (I admit I must be a flat colour 
man..)

ashley, can you add in slider style a function wich changes the size 
of the dragger ?

Here's an inconsistency.  If I have a button, and bring up an alert, 
the button remains highlited even after I move the mouse away.  But 
if the button does something else, it dehilites when I move the mouse 
away.

How does one create a widget in a hidden state?  I've got two tab-panels 
one over the other.  I want to hide the one underneath, and expose 
it when I hide the top one?

Got it.
Use a 

do [ widget/show?: false ] 

in the layout.