[Pipet Devel] more cvs changes

J.W. Bizzaro bizzaro at geoserve.net
Thu Jan 6 11:13:11 EST 2000


Brad Chapman wrote:
> 
>         First, my little directory representation thing is now "complete."
> You can scope it out the same way as before, by running './filegui.py &'.
> It can now display filesystem representations as lists and trees, and both
> have nifty little pixmaps which distinguish files from directories.

It looks very nice, Brad!

I'm thinking that for filesystem containers, the user should be able to switch
between views.  Both views would appear in the _same_ _windowlet_, and they
can be switched via...pull-down menu button, as one solution.

The menu button would appear above the list/tree view like so:

    +---------------------+
    |                 []  |
    +---------------------+
    |                     |
    |                     |
    |                     |
    |                     |
    |                     |
    |                     |
    |                     |
    +---------------------+

Clicking on the button pulls down a menu with the options:

    +---------------------+
    |                 []  |
    +------------+---------+
    |            | List    |
    |            | Tree    |
    |            | Bla     |
    |            |         |
    |            +---------+
    |                     |
    |                     |
    +---------------------+

The pull-down menu button (I don't know if that is the actual name) is the
button with the 'down arrow' on it.  For many GUI's, this is something to be
used instead of menu bars.

Why not menu bars?  Composite loci will have composite GUI's.  Imagine how
ugly multiple menu bars would look, and how confusing it would be if they all
had the same labels (for example, if they all had File, Edit and Help - note
that loci won't use 'File' in the traditional sense).

But I think pull-down menu buttons are best for 5+ options.  What's another
solution?  Little buttons on a toolbar can be used if there are only 2-4
options to display.  So the GUI could look like this:

    +---------------------+
    |            [] [] [] |
    +---------------------+
    |                     |
    |                     |
    |                     |
    |                     |
    |                     |
    |                     |
    |                     |
    +---------------------+

Look at the 'views' buttons on the MS Windows file manager for an example. 
Little icons are used to indicate the options.

>         Second, I'm starting to do more with XML stuff. I guess I'm
> thinking about getting into the overall XML scripting stuff (part II. o'
> the TODO list). In preparation for this I went through loci-core quite
> extensively and made almost an exact copy of it in loci-file. To see this
> (which hopefully looks and behaves exactly like the most recent loci-core),
> run './testgui.py' (which is located in the base directory of loci-file).
> Why did I bother to do this? A couple of reasons:
> 
> 1. To start messing around I am going to need to start changing some parts
> of workspace.py in loci-core, so to not interfere with Jeff's work, I
> decided to just make my own copy. The changes I'm making are small, so it
> should be easy to integrate them into loci-core, if so desired.
> 2. Related to number 1, I am kind of using this as a testing platform. So
> we can try out ideas, see how people like them, and then if they are
> accepted, integrate them into loci-core.

I'd really rather we both work from one module, Brad.  It doesn't bother me
that someone else is coding the Workspace.  It's just too confusing having two
versions being developed separately.  Plus imagine we get a few more
developers who want to make separate modules too ;-)

CVS is indeed very good at showing what changes have been made and managing
multiple developers for one project.  Otherwise, why use CVS?

I think your changes to the Workspace are an improvement, and I should
probably just work from what you have.  But, after talking to Gary about the
design of Loci, we will end up restructuring what we have.  I'll get back to
you about that.

>         Also, I have already made a change to how loci-core works. I
> modified workspace.py so instead of loading individual python files like
> 'container.py' to get initial info about a container, it now calls an XML
> parser which parses a 'container.xml' file to get the initial info. From
> Jeff's comments, it looked like this was a change that needed to be made,
> so I thought I would start with this to get myself going on XML stuff in
> the workspace.

That's just what I was planning on doing.  Thanks for your help :-)

>         The loci-file directory structure is still quite very unstable but
> should hopefully get a little more stable within the next couple of days,
> so if you haven't been making any changes in it, it might be best to just
> checkout a fresh copy.

I looked at the structure, and again, we'll be changing it quite a bit in the
near future to go along with some major design improvements.

>         I'm really interested to hear everyone's comments, so if you have a
> chance, please check it out.

I suppose you're planning on doing this, but the filesystem views should
appear together, in one windowlet, rather than in their own X-windows. 
Otherwise, it looks great.


Cheers.
Jeff
-- 
                      +----------------------------------+
                      |           J.W. Bizzaro           |
                      |                                  |
                      | http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff/ |
                      |                                  |
                      |           THE OPEN LAB           |
                      |    Open Source Bioinformatics    |
                      |                                  |
                      |    http://bioinformatics.org/    |
                      +----------------------------------+




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