Re: [MiNT] Window with toolbar and redraw messages

["J. F. Lemaire" <jflemaire@skynet.be>]

On 3 December 2013 09:43, Jo Even Skarstein <joska@online.no> wrote:
> On Tue, 2013-12-03 at 08:27 +0100, Helmut Karlowski wrote:
>
>> I think that's what JFL wanted to avoid, and I can understand that. The
>> AES should support such cases and not force the programmer to use
>> home-cooked stuff or "dirty" things like USERDEF.
>
> The AES does support such things in a clean and well-defined manner -
> USERDEFs... There's nothing "dirty" about this.

But there are limitations to the use of USERDEFs (at least there used
to be). Can we call wind_get(handle, WF_FTOOLBAR,...) in the USERDEF
callback function to get the rectangle list? It used to be forbidden.

> The real problem here is that JFL wants to use AES toolbars, and AES
> toolbars are not very flexible. If you want a horizontal toolbar on the
> top and a vertical on the left, you have to manage this yourself. Adding
> support for multiple toolbars is a much better solution than hacking in
> a "work area" inside a widget. With multiple toolbars you will still
> have a real work area. Problem solved.

That would be ideal, but unfortunately beyond my grasp since I'm not
the one developing the AES.

> However, the easiest and quickest solution would be to write your own
> windowed form_do(). It's not very hard, it's clean and it works with all
> AES'es. And the code can be reused in later projects very easily.

I've done that several years ago and use it in my own programs who, if
I may say so myself, are not so bad regarding the use of GEM.

However, not everyone will have the patience of re-inventing the wheel
as we did and I was more thinking in terms of advancing what XaAES can
do to simplify developing new MiNT/GEM apps. For example, the WCOWORK
mode really simplifies the management of windows.

Another case in point, colours: if you want an object to be filled
with another colour than one from the default 16 colour palette you
have to resort to a USERDEF. That's another area where XaAES might be
able to do better than the rest some day (but that's for another
discussion :-) ).

Anyway, back to the topic. I still think that a new option like:
wind_set(handle, WF_OPTS, WO0_TOOLREDRAW, 0, 0, 0, 0);
that would send redraw messages for any redrawing done within the
toolbar might be useful. But this sure needs to be tested -- and
implemented first, which is another matter completely.

Cheers,
JFL
-- 
Jean-François Lemaire