Panel/Form Widget

[Dalton Calford]

Hi Richard,
Thanks for your response!

So for the foreseeable future, we have groups, sharable within a stack,
> and clonable anywhere, even into other stacks.  Using that as a
> foundation, we may be able to write a handler or two to give you a very
> Viewer-like experience, if you can share more about the particulars of
> how you'll be using them.
>

Although I can see the use of groups as an option,  it is far less
intuitive and causes more issues than it should.
For example.
Calculating where to place/move an object within a group requires
calculating where you want a new widget or where to move a widget in
regards to the rest of the group, getting the top left corner of the group,
combining the result etc., all in code.
A parent/child with relative positioning is far simpler and closer to all
modern systems.
Another example,
During development, in other apps, you drop a panel, drop your new widgets
upon it as needed, and that is it.
With Livecode, you either do not create the group until you are absolutely
sure you know what you want in it, or, baring that, play with code or the
project browser to move items into an existing group.
Plus, using the pointer tool to move items within the group is also not
possible as the items in the group are the items you use to click upon to
move the whole group.

This is a frustrating issue for what should be a simple thing.    A
'container' would be the solution - effectively a smarter group, with
widgets having a 'parent' and a possible array list of 'children'.   This
would allow a 'child' to know it's parent, and a 'parent' to know its
children.   Event notifications such as changes in geometry, style, etc
could then be triggered/passed.   It would also allow for simpler
cropping/scroll bar mechanisms.
It would also act as a scoping mechanism for variables and events.

You could even have a stack as a child of another stack with this setup
(MDI interface).

If I had a better understanding of the codebase, I would implement it
myself.
But, If I had a better understanding of the code base, I would rather spend
my time on the database layer which is woefully limited.

best regards
Dalton

On Wed, 10 Apr 2019 at 18:11, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode <
use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> Dalton Calford wrote:
>
>  > In other programming languages/environments that I have used, there is
>  > a normally a panel object.
>  > In livecode terms, it would act like a stack that is embedded inside
>  > another stack as a widget.
>  > With Delphi, it is a panel (tabbed; normal or repeating) while in
>  > MSAccess it is a form (repeating or not).
>  > My question is, does such a thing exist in livecode?
>
> LC has groups, which can contain any number of objects, and when nested
> can even work like having multiple cards within them.  They can be
> shared across any card within a stack, but not across stacks*.
>
> Nice for some things, but if you want a true stack object within another
> stack you may have to wait a while: this enhancement request is now 14
> years old, for what Gain Momentum introduced to the xTalk world as
> "Viewers"; while the LC team has shown interest in it, other priorities
> have displaced its implementation:
>
> https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2786
>
> So for the foreseeable future, we have groups, sharable within a stack,
> and clonable anywhere, even into other stacks.  Using that as a
> foundation, we may be able to write a handler or two to give you a very
> Viewer-like experience, if you can share more about the particulars of
> how you'll be using them.
>
>
>
> * Many years ago I experimented to find that you could display a group
> in another stack, but that was never intended and crashed hard as soon
> as you interacted with it.  Turns out showing groups across stacks was
> technically a bug, long since fixed. #HistoricalTrivia
>
> --
>   Richard Gaskin
>   Fourth World Systems
>   Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
>   ____________________________________________________________________
>   Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
>
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