[Pipet Devel] Re: window sill

J.W. Bizzaro bizzaro at geoserve.net
Wed Apr 5 10:56:14 EDT 2000


Brad Chapman wrote:
> 
> Will the info button be replacing the "help" window thingy that I
> started using, or in addition to that?

I want to define 2 types of 'help': One is a message about the particular
node.  The other, since a node can be made up of a network of nodes, is a
message about the node SELECTED WITHIN the window of the node.  This I would
call 'context-sensitive help', since it will change according to the context.

The Info button will contain only the first type of 'help' (for now).  And the
message will have to be truncated, since the Info button can be only so large.

> > (When I say 'parent', I mean a node that contains a network of
> > nodes, one of which being the node in question.)
> 
> This is a really cool idea, but will the old windowlet with the
> network GUI get recycled by python memory collection if it gets popped
> out of a parent window? Just throwing that out, I really have no idea
> how memory collection works in pyGtk. Maybe it will still be fine as
> long as you maintain a reference to it.

The Gtk object, that is the 'view' in the window, will not be thrown out.  I
can just use 'show' and 'hide'.

>     Also, I was having a lot of problems getting windows to refresh
> properly after resetting the contents of a windowlet...

Just now or a while ago?  You mentioned this a couple months ago.

> > * Click button1 or button3 to cycle through views:
> >    * GUI view: Gtk (composite) interface
> 
> Can you describe this view? What does it look like?

This is the composite GUI I keep yammering about.  It contains Gtk widgets
arranged according to the heirarchy of the network (if there is one) contained
in the node.

> >    * Network normal: Network with icons, links and windows
> 
> Is this the view we currently have?

Yep.

> Jeff, I was trying to play around with the canvas zoom feature as soon
> as I saw it was a feature, because I thought it would be a really cool
> thing to use. The GUI ended up really ugly for me because not
> everything scaled in the same way, especially the text box, if I
> remember correctly.

I don't understand.  You just tried to code this feature?  What is the 'text
box'?

> How are the old views "stored"? For instance, if you have the view we
> have now, with links and windows and all that, will the view be
> exactly the same (ie. all the loci in the same places, all of the same
> windows open, etc) when you scroll back around to it?

As long as VSh (or the Gnome front) remains running, this information will not
go away.  The problem is when the program is shut down and restarted.  If the
user wants to reload a network, the middleware may have linkage information
stored, but the front end will not have x/y positions stored...at least not
now.

We do need to come up with a way to store this user interface information.  I
most certainly don't want to MIX user interface information with the
information the core needs, but we can keep it along side or parallel to the
core information...perhaps as separate files.

>     And again, I'm not positive if you'll see the refresh problem I
> couldn't fix.

I haven't come across the problem, but I have heard mention of it on the Gnome
lists.  Apparently, we can force a refresh of the widgets.

Cheers.
Jeff
-- 
                      +----------------------------------+
                      |           J.W. Bizzaro           |
                      |                                  |
                      | http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff/ |
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                      |        BIOINFORMATICS.ORG        |
                      |           The Open Lab           |
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                      |    http://bioinformatics.org/    |
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