Re: dialog items we all need

[lynch@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Richard Lynch)]

>I agree with that.  It will also be easier with MCL 2.0: we will be able
>to share classes and methods and easily adapt them to our needs.
Actually, I suspect it may become tougher in MCL 2.0   The rigidity of the
class/instance distinction may make alterations more difficult.  (But this
may just be my "doom-n-gloom" nature.  :-))  I don't see how MCL 2.0 is
going to make it easier.  Probably stay the same.

>A first thing to do would maybe be to show your interest in the sharing
>by telling the net what source code you have written and would agree to
>share?
I posted the draggable/stuffable dialog-item a while back, and have made
some recent modifications to it and intend to post this as soon as it is
sufficiently debugged. :-)

Many of the more interesting (IMHO) dialog items I have made are
inextricably mixed up with our code, and I'd have to spend a fair amount of
time to separate it out.  I will do this, but it will take some time.
The real question I had was:  "Couldn't we improve on writing code and
posting it to the list?  Specifically, aren't there some low-level objects
many of us agree should be in M(A)CL that we could collaborate on speccing
out and divvying up the various functions?"
I'll start it off by asking:

If there was to be a *draggable-dialog-item* (like an icon in Finder), and
a *stuffable-dialog-item* (i.e. one that could light up like a folder in
Finder and ingest instances of *draggable-dialog-item*), what behavior
would everyone like?

Specific questions I have:
How often is it that you want to be able to compute the gray region to be
dragged rather than using a gray rectangle matching the dialog-items
position and size?
Should there be a sound to accompany the dropping of one object on another?
Should multiple things be allowed to be dragged?
How should consistency be enforced (if at all) in terms of being able to
drag different types of objects together?
Should a *draggable-dialog-item* still be clickable?  Would you ever need
to drop something on itself?
(These last two come as a pair.  If the answer to one is Yes, the other
almost has to be No.)



PS  Has anyone got a Neural Net display window?  I've been thinking about
how to do this, but it seems pretty tough, and I don't really NEED it, it
would just look cool.

"TANSTAAFL" Rich lynch@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu