Re: [Hwgui-developers] HwGUI development

[Andi J. <xha...@te...>]

Hi Alexander:

Well come back :-)

I completely agree with you. Due to the reasons you elaborated, I
stopped using HWGUI several years ago. I hope I can see HWGUI comes back
to a LIGHT GUI for [x]Harbour.

OFF TOPIC, your another project, LETODB, now has been so 'RUINNED' so
that it cannot be compiled with xHarbour. I think this is VERY BAD. We
need you assistance to revert this 'CRUEL' changes and makes it
xHarbour-compatible again.

Thank you very much.

Andi

On Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:13:28 +0400
"Alexander S.Kresin" <al...@be...> wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
>   for a long time I didn't follow the HwGUI development. For my projects 
> I still use an old version, which is about 4 -5 years old. Sometimes, 
> quite rarely, I did necessary changes and uploaded them here. I didn't 
> use the renewed HwGUI from the SF repository because of a big number of 
> changes, for which I hadn't time and energy to review and to check. From 
> time to time I reviewed the new code partially and returned to my old 
> version because I found there many things, which I don't like.
> 
>   Recently I was asked to review the Designer, because it has serious 
> problems. I've build it with a latest HwGUI code and Harbour 3.2 and 
> really found some:
> 1) incorrect appearance of non-English characters in some places - this 
> resolves very easy by setting appropriate codepage;
> 2) object inspector - the selected items remains coloured as selected al 
> the time - I don't know why yet, probably this goes from HBrowse;
> 3) when I try to open my report forms, the designer simply hangs.
> 
>   I plan to investigate this problems deeper, but before I need to deal 
> with the current HwGUI code. As I wrote above, there are things, which I 
> don't like and which prevent me to upgrade to the newest version. There 
> is a lot of additions, I believe that they are useful and really makes 
> HwGUI better. The problem is with structure.
> 
>   From the beginning I tried to make HwGUI compact and fast. My code 
> wasn't ideal ( now it is a bit better :), and I hope it will better in 
> future - we all are learning till the end of the life ) and there was 
> fragments which I don't like. But now, from the point of a class 
> structure, the things became even worse. I believe, that classes, 
> especially basic classes, which have many objects, should have minimum 
> of variables and methods - only that, which are really necessary. When 
> HCustomWindow has some redundant variables and methods, the HControl, 
> which inherits from it, adds new redundant, the final, for example, most 
> frequently encountered HStatic has a number of redundant stuff. We have 
> a lot of HStatic, HEdit, etc. objects in a form, each of them contains a 
> lot of rubbish, which makes their response time bigger, though they 
> never use it.
>    Why the response time become bigger ? Each control gets a lot of 
> Windows messages, each message is handled in HwGUI code to find 
> appropriate method and execute it. The more methods and vars has the 
> object, the more time is needed to find necessary one.
>    To be more concrete, I consider the following methods of 
> HCustomWindow as redundant: ResetScrollbars(), SetupScrollbars(), 
> RedefineScrollbars() - because they don't needed for most controls, 
> which inherits from HCustomWindow; GetParentForm() - from my point, it 
> is better to write as a function; Hcontrol: FontBold(), FontItalic(), 
> FontUnderline() - I don't see any reson why they should be separate 
> methods. These are only examples, just to clarify my point. There is 
> more stuff which, in my opinion, should be cleared.
>   The second important thing is adding of new features to controls. Look 
> at HBrowse or HEdit - they became so big that it is very difficult to 
> review and understand their work. I believe that most of these new 
> features are useful, but why we put them into the same class ? We 
> absolutely forget about such thing as Inheritance ( the only good 
> exception is the HButtonEx by Luiz - but, IMO, it should be placed in 
> separate file ). I prefer to have simple control classes with basic 
> features, which are demanded in most cases and inherited from them, 
> maybe multiply, "ex" classes - for to keep basic set clean, fast and 
> readable.
> 
>   So, I suggest to rewrite some parts of HwGUI in accordance with these 
> thoughts and I'd like to hear your opinions.
> 
>   Regards, Alexander.
> 
> P.S. Uff... I hate to write such a long texts, especially on English :)
> 
>