[GUI] Opinion summary.

[Axel Simon]

On Sun, Feb 16, 2003 at 06:37:10PM +0100, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:
> Hello again,
> 
> some mails ago I already talked about the two interpretions of "level":
>     (a) functional (high) vs. imperative (low)
>     (b) high level GUI concepts (e.g., common dialogs) vs. low level GUI
>         concepts (e.g., single widgets or even drawing primitives)
> 
> Opinion 4c currently says that the common API shall be at a higher level than 
> the (L) interface. A problem is that it is not clear to which meaning of 
> "level" this refers. I definitely meant that the common API shall be 
> high-level with respect to (b). Another point is that I didn't want to talk 
> about differences between the "common API" and the (L) interface. In fact, I 
> wanted to say that already the (L) interface should be high-level in the (b) 
> meaning. Otherwise it would be hard or impossible to implement a 
> native-look-and-feel (A) interface on top of it. If, for example, (L) didn't 
> support file open dialogs directly, (A) would have to build them itself which 
> would probably lead to dialogs which are different from the platform specific 
> ones.

Yes, I think the term level on the Haskell web-site refers to (a). To me
it is not clear that we have to restrict ourselves in term of (b): Of 
course, we need to support the native Open File dialogs instead of 
building our own, but even elementary thing like drawing onto a canvas 
could be made common to all platforms since they all use an 
"redraw-this-part" event-driven scheme AFAIK. Perhaps I can add a list of 
topics we can potentially cover and then see if it is achievable.

> So I would rephrase 4c as follows:
>     to achieve native look-and-feel on each platform, the common API shall
>     provide support for high-level GUI concepts like common dialogs or
>     applications, not only for widget structures
 Ok, I added a comment to the footnote in the Abstraction Level paragraph.  
Since this is supposed to be only a summary of opinions, I put your
paragraph into the preliminary "Mission Statement" section.

> Furthermore, in section 2 (objectives) you talk about the platforms "the 
> community is interested in". Does this mean that this covers all platforms 
> someone from the community is interested in or that it covers only those 
> platforms most people of the community are interested in. If the former is 
> the case, I would like to see KDE added.
But I thought Qt represents KDE in terms of the user interface?! Or is 
this relation like Gtk-GNOME where GNOME provides more advanced widgets?

I'll change Gtk to Gtk(GNOME) and Qt to Qt (KDE) then.

Thanks for the comments,

document update,
Axel.