Variable windows: BLT or ???

Variable windows: BLT or ???

[Keith Seitz]

Hi,

Ok, so here we are. At long last, we are ready to whack tix from our
repository. This is the moment for which I've been waiting for a long,
long time. I'm sure Jim, Fernando, and Martin are equally happy to see us
come this far along.

Any way, in order to completely remove tix from our repository, we need to
have a solution for the variable windows. This is (and has been) the
biggest stumbling block for us whacking tix. We need some sort of
hierachial tree widget.

I see three options:

1) Pull in and update the "tree" widget that Source Navigator uses
2) Pull in BLT and use its hiertree widget.
3) Look for another alternative (including writing our own)

Having been through the SN tree widget, my inclination is to go with #2
right now, even though it will take some non-trivial effort (for me) to
upgrade BLT to build on cygwin.

Anyone have any comments on BLT, SN's tree widget, other alternatives?
Keith

Re: Variable windows: BLT or ???

[Syd Polk]

On Tuesday, August 28, 2001, at 05:31 PM, Keith Seitz wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Ok, so here we are. At long last, we are ready to whack tix from our
> repository. This is the moment for which I've been waiting for a long,
> long time. I'm sure Jim, Fernando, and Martin are equally happy to see 
> us
> come this far along.
>
> Any way, in order to completely remove tix from our repository, we need 
> to
> have a solution for the variable windows. This is (and has been) the
> biggest stumbling block for us whacking tix. We need some sort of
> hierachial tree widget.
>
> I see three options:
>
> 1) Pull in and update the "tree" widget that Source Navigator uses

This is pretty horrid code; I don't think it is a really viable solution.

> 2) Pull in BLT and use its hiertree widget.

This would save a lot of time, although there is porting pain.

> 3) Look for another alternative (including writing our own)
>

This is the last resort. It takes a long time to do this.

I recommend #2.

> Having been through the SN tree widget, my inclination is to go with #2
> right now, even though it will take some non-trivial effort (for me) to
> upgrade BLT to build on cygwin.
>
> Anyone have any comments on BLT, SN's tree widget, other alternatives?
> Keith
>
>
Syd Polk
QA and Integration Manager, Mac OSX Development Tools
+1 408 974-0577

Re: Variable windows: BLT or ???

[Jim Ingham]

Keith,


> Hi,
>
> Ok, so here we are. At long last, we are ready to whack tix from our
> repository. This is the moment for which I've been waiting for a long,
> long time. I'm sure Jim, Fernando, and Martin are equally happy to see 
> us
> come this far along.
>

Great...

> Any way, in order to completely remove tix from our repository, we need 
> to
> have a solution for the variable windows. This is (and has been) the
> biggest stumbling block for us whacking tix. We need some sort of
> hierachial tree widget.
>
> I see three options:
>
> 1) Pull in and update the "tree" widget that Source Navigator uses

This did look kind of awful...

> 2) Pull in BLT and use its hiertree widget.

I agree with Syd, this is the best option.  You should not have to pull 
it in, however, I am pretty sure the SID folks already added it to the 
cygnus tree.  You just need to include it in the insight module, and 
fiddle with dependencies.

> 3) Look for another alternative (including writing our own)
>

This seems like a waste of time.  There aren't any other good C-based 
ones
out there, and a quick glance at the BLT code will convince you this is 
not altogether trivial.

And you really don't want to use one of the canvas based ones,
those get too slow too quickly.

> Having been through the SN tree widget, my inclination is to go with #2
> right now, even though it will take some non-trivial effort (for me) to
> upgrade BLT to build on cygwin.
>

George uses cygwin to build BLT himself - or at least he did last time I 
talked to him.  I would be really surprised if he has switched to Visual 
Studio.  So I don't think this should be much of a problem - just make 
sure the version you have is up to date.

If you do run into any snags, you should surely contact George, he is 
usually very helpful about things like this.

> Anyone have any comments on BLT, SN's tree widget, other alternatives?

Go with BLT!

Jim
--
Jim Ingham                                   jingham@apple.com
Developer Tools - gdb
Apple Computer

Re: Variable windows: BLT or ???

[Ian Roxborough]

On Tuesday, August 28, 2001, at 05:31 PM, Keith Seitz wrote:
> Any way, in order to completely remove tix from our repository, we need to
> have a solution for the variable windows. This is (and has been) the
> biggest stumbling block for us whacking tix. We need some sort of
> hierachial tree widget.
> 
> I see three options:
> 
> 1) Pull in and update the "tree" widget that Source Navigator uses

This is a widget with about 200 or 300 features (no quite but it 
seems that way).  I've fixed some of problems/flaws in this widget,
however this was mainly to make Source-Navigator look pretty.
Unless you are playing with trees and tables with over a 1000
items in them, then this widget isn't the best solution.

> 2) Pull in BLT and use its hiertree widget.

Could do...

> 3) Look for another alternative (including writing our own)

I would suggest looking at BWidgets:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=12883&release_id=44317

A pretty lite weight Tcl only (as in no C code).
 
> Having been through the SN tree widget, my inclination is to go with #2
> right now, even though it will take some non-trivial effort (for me) to
> upgrade BLT to build on cygwin.

I tried to replace the treetable widget in SN with the BWidgets and
the BLT tree, neither of these where able to do the job out of the box,
but this is because of the overloaded nature of SN.

BWidget would be my favorite, although I would like to see BLT
in Insight (and Source-Navigator), but for other reasons.

> Anyone have any comments on BLT, SN's tree widget, other alternatives?

You could remove Tix and replace it with BWidget.  Then at some
point in the future introduce BLT.  I wouldn't be so quick to bring
in BLT just to provide one widget (I'm more interested in BLT
for the other widgets/features).

Some notes on BWidgets: Last release July 2001 and uses Tcl/Tk8.1.1
or higher.

Ian.

Re: Variable windows: BLT or ???

[Keith Seitz]

On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Ian Roxborough wrote:

> I would suggest looking at BWidgets:
>
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=12883&release_id=44317
>
> A pretty lite weight Tcl only (as in no C code).

I've downloaded and looked at this wiget set on linux. It does look pretty
nice (I especially like their comobox look: very, very nice). However, the
tree widget is not sufficient for my needs.

I want a hierarchial tree widget which supports multiple columns,
interactive sizing of those columns, reodering the columns, the ability to
insert an edit entry into the column, and such: all the stuff that the SN
tree widget can (more or less) do.

Other than the SN tree widget, which I am not inclined to use, the only
other out-of-the-box widget that I've played with that I like is the BLT
widget.

Now, I wouldn't mind shaking up libgui a bit with some of the BWidgets...
:-)

Keith