From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Dec 2 17:49:14 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id RAA28653 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 2 Dec 1996 17:49:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id RAA28648 for ; Mon, 2 Dec 1996 17:49:08 -0800 (PST) Received: (from msmith@localhost) by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.8.2/8.7.3) id MAA07524; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 12:18:53 +1030 (CST) From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199612030148.MAA07524@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: text, menu/dialog/windowing, library, ideas? In-Reply-To: <27053.849528306@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at "Dec 2, 96 04:05:06 am" To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 12:18:52 +1030 (CST) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Jordan K. Hubbard stands accused of saying: > > Yeah, though Ctk is also a good example of what happens if you try and > take the Tk paradigm and extend it in a direction it was never meant > to go. "Klunky" doesn't even come close to programming in Ctk. Yup. You want something "like" Tk, not a port of Tk to curses. > I suppose that if you were *really* heavily into abstraction, you > could do both and the encapsulation of an HTML generator/driver would > just become another interface type. :-) > > I dunno, what do you think of all this? HTML is too weak. We had this shot down last time 8( How do you plan do do, say, a progress indicator? (redirects? server push?) Or how do I do an interactive setup page; eg. here's something like what I was tinkering with for the parition editor screen for the tool I'm currently working on : Current slice : 1:2 Partitions : Mount : a: [<<] ###...................................... [>>] 25MB / b: [<<] #########................................ [>>] 64MB swap e: [<<] ######################................... [>>] 150MB /usr f: [<<] ......................................... [>>] 0MB g: [<<] ......................................... [>>] 0MB h: [<<] ......................................... [>>] 0MB Free: #####.................................... 15MB [Accept] [Revert] [Cancel] Pretty obvious; hit the buttons to size your partitions, the hashmarks move to give you feedback, etc. This is actually fairly easy to implement with little more than "put the cursor here" and perhaps inverse video to show the highlight. But you _can't_ do this sort of interactive feedback without client-side scripting. Which loses you Lynx. Which is the only real plus for HTML in the first place. > Jordan -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[