[GUI] Some Discussion Topics

[Wolfgang Thaller]

There seem to be several different discussions going on at the same 
time, all mixed up into one thread. Yet many of the topics we have to 
tackle are completely orthogonal to each other. I'll attempt to list a 
few that can and perhaps should be discussed separately, in no 
particular order:

1) How to create objects and how to get/set their attributes - the 
Haskell side of things
2) Laying out widgets
3) What widgets should be supported in the initial version

4) Graphics Drawing

5) What different kinds of Windows are there, and how do they behave?
This is the MDI/SDI issue, phrased differently.
 From the top of my head, I can think of
- document windows
- modeless dialog windows,
- application-modal dialog windows (and alert windows/message boxes)
- window-modal dialog boxes (do they exist on any non-MacOS platform?)
- utility windows (for toolbars etc.)
- MDI frame windows (which don't exist on all platforms - an MDI frame 
should be created automatically when appropriate for MDI applications).

6) How should menu bars be laid out?
We have to deal with different conventions of different platforms

7) How should keyboard shortcuts for menu commands and for other 
commands be handled?

I guess that 1) one of the most important points.
Number 5) is very important for providing native look-and-feel, and 
almost all existing cross-platform toolkits have done this at least 
slightly wrong by designing with only one platform in mind.
I'm sure there are several more areas that will need discussion....

Cheers,

Wolfgang