[comp.windows.x] gadgets

mcintyre@turing.cs.rpi.edu (David McIntyre) (02/20/89)

Would some Xguru please outline a little of the design and
construction of gadgets?  Nothing very detailed, just
an outline of implementation strategies?

I, unfortunately, have to write functions which are probably
going to require "windowless-widgets", and so some kind
of push-in-the-right-direction would be really nice.

				-Dave


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ben@hpcvlx.HP.COM (Benjamin Ellsworth) (02/22/89)

> Would some Xguru please outline a little of the design and
> construction of gadgets?  Nothing very detailed, just
> an outline of implementation strategies?

Unfortunately, our design and implementation is considered proprietary.

> ...some kind of push-in-the-right-direction would be really nice.

I think that you have at least two options.  You can look at the stuff
in the R3 Xt intrinsics that was left there for "gadget" handling, or 
you can decide what needs to be done and work with/around the Xt 
intrinsics to accomplish it.  Your challenge will be to convince the 
intrinsics to play nicely with objects that don't have a window
attached.  I think that your key trade-off will be how much
non-standard (or non-Xt-intrinsics) scaffolding you are willing to
build and support.

You might have to extend/bug-fix the Xt intrinsics to get the job done.
To the degree that you are willing to tie a widget/gadget library to an
instance of the Xt intrinsics library, you can get away with this.  If 
you are a heavy-weight in the intrinsics specification group, you might
even be able to get your changes/extensions accepted as a standard.

>				-Dave

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swick@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ralph R Swick) (02/22/89)

> Date: 22 Feb 89 01:40:08 GMT
> From: hp-pcd!hpcvlx!ben@hplabs.hp.com  (Benjamin Ellsworth)
>
> You can look at the stuff
> in the R3 Xt intrinsics that was left there for "gadget" handling, or 
> you can decide what needs to be done and work with/around the Xt 
> intrinsics to accomplish it.

DEC has presented a formal proposal to the Xt architecture team
to make the latent Object support in R3 Xt official.  That proposal
is currently undergoing review by the architecture team.  Until
such time as it (or a variant, though there are none currently
proposed) is adopted by the Consortium, the only real source
of programming information (outside of the code itself) is DEC's XUI
documentation.