[Anygui-devel] Tasks

[Magnus L. H. <ml...@id...>]

While we are debugging the current release (in the hope of getting a
relatively stable 0.1), we should also start thinking about release
0.2. There are a few areas we need to work in here:

  1. Refactoring of the FBI. How heavy must it be? What should be
     done?

  2. Add menus. Some thoughts are found in IRFC 0011. Although I'd
     like to make the menu mechansim as simple as possible, we ought
     to think about adding support for automatically changing the menu
     structure based on current focus etc.
  
  3. Add graphics. We have already started work on Canvas, but it
     needs to be continued (including support for text and fonts), and
     implemented in all backends. Also, the graphics mechanism must be
     changed to fit the loose coupling architecture used elsewhere, or
     it won't work with several of the backends.

  4. Complete the event set. We need to design a list of events with
     corresponding keyword arguments that will cover our needs in
     release 0.2, and it needs to be fairly complete. (Probably not as
     complete as in many other GUI packages, since we don't support as
     many ways of generating events, and since we want to keep things
     simple.) This also necessitates, of course, adding the proper
     calls to send in all the backends.

  5. Design an interface for adding new native widgets. This may
     simply be the standard FBI, but I think we ought to make
     something even simpler, if possible. (Actually, this might not be
     possible...) The idea is that it should be possible (preferrably
     *easy* for simple tasks) to implement backend-dependent
     components, with pure-Anygui alternatives for backends you don't
     explicitly support. Even a very simple mechanism (based on the
     backend() function and some helpful Component superclass) is
     acceptable for release 0.2.

  6. More layout managers. We shouldn't have many of these, but in
     addition to the Placer, we might want a grid. Also, I think we
     should look into utility functions here, such as col(), row(),
     and grid() (as discussed previously), and possibly the indexing
     scheme borrowed from NumPy (also described earlier). Perhaps
     there are other simple "sizers" we could use as well (e.g. "fill
     70% of this component on the left side" etc.)

  7. Create an easy-to-understand, easy-to-update FBI
     (Frontend-Backend-Interface) specification, with the supported
     attributes of each component, and which events they should
     generate. (Other things?)

This may seem like a lot of work, but just look at what we've already
accomplished! :)

I have picked up some preferences from some of you, and suggest the
following (but others are certainly welcome to jump in here):

   Alex spearheads the refactoring of the FBI, possibly including some
   simple FBI specification

   Laura spearheads the design and implementation of the event list

   Joe spearheads the design and implementation of the Canvas
   mechanism, as well as the layout manager set

We still need someone who is passionate <wink> about menus to take a
look at the new menu system; as for the "passthrough API" I think that
can be done without a "designated champion", but if someone wants to
take a look at it, that's great :)

So... What do you want to work with specifically? Are there things
I've missed? Other things that need a "champion"?

There are other smaller tasks too, of course, such as implementing
native dialogues for such things as file opening etc. (Just take a
look at the TODO file.) Take your pick ;)

As for the "spearheading" and "championing", that's mainly a matter of
making sure things are done, not necessarily doing all the work
yourself, of course :)

--
Magnus Lie Hetland                                  The Anygui Project
http://hetland.org                                  http://anygui.org