[Python-3000] PyGUI in Py3K stdlib, more details

[Giovanni Bajo]

Greg Ewing wrote:

>>> I can see the accessibility
>>> argument, but it is basically asking for the ability to drive an
>>> interface designed for use with a pointing device, without using a
>>> pointing device.  I'm not sure this is a reasonable constraint.
>>
>> It is. Every GUI toolkit has this, every GUI program people use in
>> the world have this feature.
>
> Not every system goes about providing it the same way, though.
> This business of putting & in front of letters is a Windows-ism
> that Linux seems to have become infected with. MacOSX has a quite
> different approach that doesn't require the application author to
> do anything special at all -- it's a system feature there, not
> an application feature.
>
> I'll have to think further about what this means for PyGUI.

I'd be fine with a system for abstracting the issue so that it becomes
"automatic" (with a few constraints: I still need to be able to specify a
specific letter for a specific item). What I'm worried about is the attitude
"you don't really need this feature" I read in this thread. A GUI toolkit
should be neutral towards what's "best" to do with a GUI, and expose to the
user all the features that are commonly found in today's GUIs.

>> No, it should be a standard component because it's used by almost
>> any non-toy application, and it's mad to require that every
>> application reinvent the wheel.
>
> But it's not clear what a status bar would *do* other than
> being a container for other components. Can you elaborate?

By itself, I don't expect a status bar to be a special control. In other
words, I *am* minimalist in implementation design. But I expect a GUI
toolkit to provide a StatusBar "wrapper" filled with handy features (that
you *can* obtain by yourself by rewriting the same class, but that's not the
point):

- Ability to display a message, which can be either permanent or timed
(after a few seconds, it disappears)
- Ability to have a size grip in its bottom-right corner (assuming PyGUI has
a SizeGrip class, which it should grow anyway).
- Ability to add custom widgets which are automatically right-aligned and
arranged within the status bar

See also: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.1/qstatusbar.html


>> Every serious GUI toolkit has a statusbar.
>
> Cocoa doesn't. (It has something called an NSStatusBar,
> but it doesn't do what what you're talking about.)

I believe Aqua does, though (but I might be wrong).
-- 
Giovanni Bajo