[Boa Constr] Impressions and comments...

[Mike C. F. <mcf...@ho...>]

Hi all,

I've been playing with Boa (from the CVS) for a few days now, working on
building a whole slew of dialogues for a wxPython app I'm behind on.
Overall I'm impressed.  The dialogue building is going well, and it's saving
me some serious time.  The following is a list of the nits I've run across
so far.  I'm using Boa primarily as a GUI layout system, rather than as an
actual IDE, so most comments will focus on the design window.

1) Need a way to specify a particular ID for a given button (particularly
need wxID_OK and wxID_CANCEL so that we can get automatic OK/Cancel
behaviour in dialogues.  Potentially include OK/Cancel buttons explicitly in
the buttons toolbar as well (still need the ability to specify).

2) Inspector's Event Handler Definition needs ability to specify a
non-default name for the method

3) Inspector's "checkmark to expand options" is not intuitive, possibly use
an owner-drawn icon instead?

4) Option for auto-expansion of the editing window when not showing the
designer would help with editing.  Would likely require adding the "new"
toolbar as a menu in the editor.  Alternate window layouts with, for
instance, a "design window" set and a "code editing" set might be useful.

5) Would be nice to have drag-and-drop functionality for the widgets.  (i.e.
drag from the toolbar to the design window).

6) How do you add new items to the list of available widgets (sub-classes,
entirely new classes, etceteras)?

7) For a text control, altering "label" in the properties panel changes the
control value, but doesn't alter the "value" attribute in the construction
panel. (Reverse does work).

8) I couldn't find a "test dialog" function anywhere, i.e. run the dialog
using run-time controls and report each event/call/etceteras generated by
user interactions.  Not sure if I just missed it, but it's a really useful
feature for figuring out what's going on.

9) Events panel of the inspector should likely use something other than
"small list" style.  Because the names are touching the edges it looks as
though scrolling only lets you see the "Event" text rather than showing
entirely new event classes.  A downward-scrolling list gives a better "feel"
that there's more items to see.

10) Default editor font for windows is very large on my machine, not sure
why that is, I'm running a 1152x864 resolution, font looks to be about 15 or
16 point.  It's changeable, of course, but a smaller default might be
reasonable.

11) A wxWindow option should be available in the Containers/Layout toolbar.
(Or see #6)

12) Could really use "nudge" key bindings for the design window.  i.e. the
arrow keys nudge the selection 1 pixel or grid-point in their appropriate
direction.

13) Would suggest that when grid mode is on that new items be sized in
increments of the grid

14) Sequence: Create dialog, Add Button, Add Button, Delete Button, Delete
Button --> crashes (consistently)

16) Having menus on a "nested" window (i.e. the edit window) instead of at
the top of the screen is "counter-experiential" (unfamiliar/breaks habits)
for most GUI users.

17) Having an option to use a single top-level window which always restores
a "window set" of the IDE would be useful (versus having to click 3 separate
windows to get "back to Boa").

18) Sizer support would be a nice feature.  wxDesigner is cool, but still
awkward for doing lots of dialogues.

19) Icon editor or file drag-and-drop or image cut-and-paste would be useful
for editing icon attributes.

20) Colour editor should use the "full dialogue" to allow for defining
non-16-colour palette colours.

21) Colour fields in the inspector should paint themselves the appropriate
colour or contain the "text" of the colour e.g. FFFFFF or 255,255,255 or
1.0,1.0,1.0  (preferably a standardised representation, of course) on the
colour (text colour = (255 & (colour.Red()+128)), (255 &
(colour.Green()+128)), (255 & (colour.Blue()+128))).

Okay, must be off now. Keep up the good work and enjoy yourselves,
Mike

__________________________________
 Mike C. Fletcher
 Designer, VR Plumber
 http://members.home.com/mcfletch