Subject:
Re: FLNX mods to fltk
From:
Jordan Crouse ####@####.####
Date:
15 Feb 2001 23:01:54 -0000
Message-Id: <3A8C611B.FC26559@censoft.com>
Yes, you have discovered a very unfortunate FLTK/FLNX quirk, in that
each window is a graphical engine window, and all
of the widgets are part of that window. It is also true that one window
gets all the events for all of the child widgets.
It would definitely be nice to have a different window for each widget,
but unfortunately, this is probably not a feasible option
in the near term: First, it would involve a major rewrite of the FLNX
(and FLTK) system to handle this. I mean just think of the time it
would
take to redo each widget, not to mention the event handler (it would
definitely be simplified, but still, that's alot of code to wade
through). Secondly, I believe that the extra work would affect the
functionality of the toolkit to the point where it would probably affect
our ability to directly run FLTK programs on FLNX with no modifications.
I am having trouble figuring out exactly what problems the handwriting
system would have, I would think that the XKey event could be sent to
the window with the current focus, and then the FLTK manager would go
ahead and send it to the correct widget. That's what we do with Nano-X
and our keyboard/scribble client, and it seems to work fine.
I also don't agree that we have unneeded events -- we would handle most
events anyway - any event that would get sent to the individual widget
is still sent by the main event handler. I guess you could cut out the
occasional event here and there, but I think that in the long run, it
wouldn't save nearly as much as you are hopping it would.
But I agree with your general point - a well constructed widget set
would have individual windows for each widget, and I am hoping that the
several groups that are working on Nano-X widget sets take that into
consideration. But as far as FLTK is concerned, I don't think its a
huge problem, and I definitely don't think that it's worth it to modify
at this point. Maybe FLTK 2.0 will be a different story?
Jordan
Robert Hartley wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have been playing around with one of those Agenda VR3 Linux PDAs for a
> day now.
>
> So far it looks pretty cool.
>
> I have come across a puzzle with the X11 version of FLTK that I hope
> might already be solved in FLNX by you guys.
>
> Could you please let me know if you modified FTLK so that each widget
> had its own window, and if you have it setup so that only input type
> windows are associated with them?
>
> As it stands, FLTK is doing too much of the window management functions
> compared to toolkits like Motif. (I understand the reasons why,
> windowing code abstraction and separation, etc)
>
> My understadning of FLTK is as follows:
> FLTK basically creates a single window into which it draws almost all
> its widgets, so there is only a single event mask used.
>
> In Motif (and others), each widget has its own X window (except for
> gadgets), so it is pretty easy to see which widgets will get what type
> of event.
>
> This becomes important for hand writing recognition (HWR), because it
> would be so simple for the X server to just look at the event mask when
> it changes focus to a new window, and then let the HWR applet know where
> to send XKey events to.
>
> On a battery powered PDA, code efficiency is important, so it would be
> great if these unneeded events could be ignored before getting into the
> users app.
>
> I have half a mind to just create an X window for each widget, and then
> change the input mask as appropriate for the type of widget it is.
>
> Is this a "bad bad idea" you have already rejected, or would it be
> useful the world at large?
>
> Rob
>
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