Re: [Rexxtill-devel] lets talk GUI

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Hi Rony,

On 26 March 2011 10:00, Rony G. Flatscher <Ron...@wu...>wrote:

> Hi Jon,
>
> snip

> just a brief comment.
>
> On 26.03.2011 08:21, Sahananda (Jon) Wolfers wrote:The GUI should run
> fullscreen without a frame if possible.... cut ...
>
snip

> > The Administrator should be able to determine where on the screen the
> > various elements are.
> > The Administrator should be able to define the position and size of
> > the keypads, the number of rows and columns on a keypad and whether
> > there is a space between the buttons.  If there is no space, then it
> > looks a bit strange, but adjacent buttons can be combined to make
> > larger buttons.
> > There will be a picture file for keys which are not defined on this
> > keypad (blank key)
>
snip

> > As ever, I am interested in responses, suggestion for better ways to
> > do this.
>
snip

>
> About placing graphical elements on a canvas: here you may want to
> explore "Layout Manager" (e.g.
> <
> http://www.google.at/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=de&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=layout+manager&btnG=Google-Suche
> >),
> which should take on the task of laying out the graphical elements
> according to your different possible configurations. This would be about
> extracting the layouting task (which can be rather complex) from
> painting and controlling GUI elements.
>
> HTH,
>
> ---rony
>

I've had a quick look at layout managers and it looks to me like they are a
Java thing - and work with swing and AWT.  Is that right?

The nearest thing we have in ooDialog would be dlgArea I think.

Laying out the real-estate on the screen is a small task which is probably
done once or not at all (the instalation administrator may accept the
default or one of a set of templates) for each adopter.

Probably there are 5 elements on the screen.  I have posted a couple of
diagrams here<http://rexxtill.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/rexxtill/docs/trunk/design/>to
give a general idea.

In openBravoPOS changing the layout is a matter of changing some XML and
possibly adjusting some code.  In the till system we currently use (Sage
Paypoint) there is a configuration file full of binary-ored flag values in
decimal representation.  I think we can do better than either of those.

Jon