Widgets' Use Cases and Bytes Added to App

[Richard Gaskin]

Paul Dupuis wrote:

 > On 4/5/2016 6:12 AM, Peter TB Brett wrote:
 >>> Frequently we use small groups to instantiate "objects" which are
 >>> made of of several controls grouped together. These are then
 >>> replicated across some card for whatever purpose. I think that is the
 >>> underlying model for the DataGrid.
 >>>
 >>> Would such a small group be better created as a widget?
 >>
 >> Unfortunately we don't _quite_ have the engine features required to
 >> wrap a set of "classic" controls into a widget. :-/
 >
 > I'd like to put in a plug that being able to do exactly that (make a
 > widget that is a group of classic controls, plus scripts) would be a
 > feature I'd very much like to see. I really don't expect to use
 > widgets for creating custom buttons (or whatever), but we use groups
 > of controls everywhere in our application and making a number of them
 > in to widgets that can easily be added to a new window would
 > definitely accelerate development.

Widgets have great packaging, and for controls like the ones they're 
currently used for it's a nice way to handle things, able to mix OS 
calls with lower-level drawing routines to render GUI elements in ways 
that are well worth the effort to learn LCB.

But traditional custom controls have a place too, and the LiveCode 
Script they rely continues to be enhanced even as LCB is expanded along 
with it.

The additional object overhead of custom controls isn't that much higher 
than Widgets, and with behaviors can be close to zero depending on the 
complexity of the control.

With the group message, behaviors, before and after handlers, getProp 
and setProp, and other such goodies, I can't think of a project I've 
worked on in recent years that hasn't made extensive use of custom controls.

In fact, many that I need are one-offs needed only for a specific 
project.  They're easy enough to write on LC Script that it takes almost 
no time at all, and keeps the code and property management well 
centralized for easy development and maintenance.

I can see writing Widgets for things I'll use across multiple projects, 
but as Kevin noted here a while back LC Script is the fastest way to 
develop, with LC Builder being the _much_ faster-to-code alternative to 
writing in C.

So if you have stuff that can be done in LC Script, go for it.  Fast to 
develop, performant to run, and will continue working well even as LC 
Builder continues to expand to handle other things.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com