[Tile-dev] Tile feedback

[Steve L. <st...@Di...>]

hi Joe,

As discussed, attached is my feedback re the Tile notebook.

I've started moving an cross-platform / multi-lingual app to Tile and  
I wanted to give you some feedback re the highs and the lows that  
I've encountered, with the specific intent of helping make Tile reach  
it's obvious potential.

The application itself uses BWidgets + tablelist (plus optcl and a  
few other extensions).

Overall, the process has been relatively easy - largely because I use  
ActiveState's style package and therefore tend to not play around  
with widget options explicitly.

Getting BWidgets to play nicer with Tile was easy enough, thanks to  
Jeff's mods in the latest BWidgets

	package require BWidgets
	Widget::theme 1

Likewise, the newer versions of tablelist have some tile support

	package require tablelist_tile

The main issue I've struck so far has been limitations with the  
notebook widget.  Whilst I suspect that notebook can do everything I  
want, I find it much less convenient to use than the BWidget notebook.

For example, BWidget NoteBook has a raisecmd option, that causes the  
specified command to be run when a tab is raised. Also, it allows  
symbolic names for tabs. I use this extensively, and it is quite  
convenient to say something like
	
	$notebook insert end TabName -frame $frame -raisecmd [list raisecmd  
TabName]

where the raisecmd proc can then do whatever it needs to do for the  
current tab. Or I could have written it like

	$notebook insert end TabName -frame $frame -raisecmd raisecmd

and within raisecommand use "$notebook raised" to get the symbolic  
name of the currently raised tab.

I realise I can use the  <<NotebookTabChanged>>  virtual event, but  
it is nowhere near as convenient. Setting it up is easy enough ....

	   bind $notebook <<NotebookTabChanged>> raisecmd

But within raisecmd I then have to discover which tab was raised.  
Sounds simple, but without symbolic names for tabs I can either use  
the numeric index (which will breaks because not all tabs are  
displayed) or the tab text (which will break because the application  
is multilingual). I'm assuming that I could use the child pane  
window, except I don't see any way of retrieving it. For example

	$notebook tab current

returns

	-padding 0 -sticky nsew -state normal -text TabName -image {} - 
compound none -underline -1

In the end I worked around it by creating all the tabs I might need  
and leaving unused ones hidden - and then using numeric indices. A  
pain and the resulting application code is much more complicated than  
it needs to be.

I'm not even sure what the solution should be - a "-raisecmd" option,  
symbolic tab names, a way of passing the child pane window in the  
event binding, modify the "notebook select" command to return the  
selected tab if no index is specified, whatever. I just know that  
Tile notebook is good but could be much better with a little effort.

Now please don't think I'm saying that the Tile notebook is all bad -  
it isn't and I wouldn't have invested the time if I didn't think the  
end results justified it. But equally, please don't gloss over the  
issue either.  Leaving aside the pros/cons of the BWidget  
implementation - the authors clearly understood the requirements of  
application development and it would be a shame if Tile remains more  
difficult to use for the application programmer.

I realise that there are different ways of achieving the same  
outcome, but my concern is that issues like the above are an  
impediment to Tile realising it's potential.

Best regards

Steve