Checkboxes and different fonts..

>   Since VW is built with the goal of platform-independent, its GUI windows
> are using emulated controls and could have multitudes of look and feels by
> its GUI class architecture, which make it easy to build brand-new
> customized
> GUI widgets using its graphic canvas tools ( the above statement was
> solely
> from my own personal inference from reading its documentations, which
> maybe
> wrong,  I'm not familiar with VW at all), I might ask that if Dolphin
> could
> follow that way to make the process of creating new widgets easy, so that
> more new buttons views and controls could be added with the like of Mac,
> Motif or unique custumized one,  not only the Windows default  ones .

> "kuo" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
> news:[hidden email]...
> >   Since VW is built with the goal of platform-independent, its GUI windows
> > are using emulated controls and could have multitudes of look and feels by
> > its GUI class architecture, which make it easy to build brand-new
> > customized
> > GUI widgets using its graphic canvas tools ( the above statement was
> > solely
> > from my own personal inference from reading its documentations, which
> > maybe
> > wrong,  I'm not familiar with VW at all), I might ask that if Dolphin
> > could
> > follow that way to make the process of creating new widgets easy, so that
> > more new buttons views and controls could be added with the like of Mac,
> > Motif or unique custumized one,  not only the Windows default  ones .
>
> I am not very familiar with VW either, I have not looked at it closely in
> years.  I think your understanding of their GUI implementation is probably
> correct.  VW uses emulated UI widgets, and Dolphin uses native widgets in
> the base system.  There is, however nothing stopping anyone from
> implementing their own emulated widgets in Dolphin.  I have done that when I
> needed very specialized controls.  You can see the MoenTreeView for an
> example of an emulated widget in the base system.
>
> There can be a performance impact to using emulated widgets.  If you have
> Smalltalk code completely responsible for drawing a complex emulated widget
> you may find that it appears slower than the (presumably) highly optimized
> machine code the OS uses for drawing native widgets.  This is not always
> true, there may be cases where many native widgets can be virtualized by an
> emulated widget and handled more efficiently.
>
> I appreciate the fact that Dolphin uses native widgets.  One of the things I
> did not like about VW (this may have changed in recent versions) is that it
> did not look like a "normal" windows application when running on Windows.  I
> also could see that the emulated widgets did not repaint as well as native
> widgets, making the application feel slower.
>
> Perhaps I am old fashioned, but for me an important point in a GUI is the
> consistency of look and feel throughout all applications.  I don't like
> using programs that feel they have to be cute and use a non-standard look
> and feel.  I much prefer function over form in software.  I think it is best
> to use native widgets whenever possible.  However if an emulated widget
> truly adds value to the function of a program than I will use one.  Since
> Windows XP allows the user to change the look of all applications then if a
> users want to feel like they are using a Mac then they can do that, and it
> will presumably be consistent across all applications (except those using
> emulated widgets).  Given where MS is going with the Windows UI, truly
> emulating controls may get more complex as MS adds more and more subtle
> visual effects to them.
>
> I like the fact that Dolphin uses native widgets.  The deployed applications
> look like normal windows programs and have responsive UI's.  Additionally
> when Windows XP came out it was very easy for Dolphin to adopt the XP look.
> Now if OA decided to support multiple operating systems then it might be
> worth considering non-native widgets.  However even then I prefer the way
> IBM VAST works, I believe it uses adapters to native widgets on different
> operating systems.

> "Christopher J. Demers" <[hidden email]> wrote in
> message news:<[hidden email]>...
>> Now if OA decided to support multiple operating systems then it might be
>> worth considering non-native widgets.  However even then I prefer the way
>> IBM VAST works, I believe it uses adapters to native widgets on different
>> operating systems.
>
> You can also interact with any other GUI library instead of win32. You
> can interact with GTK+ or QT, or any other. You need just to create a
> new QView or GTKView replacement hierarchy. In that way you don't need
> to implement basic GUI operations. Most of these libraries includes
> their own theme system and also they are multi platform and highly
> portable (just thinking on a dolphin port in the future).