Development

This page discusses features to be implemented. Take with a grain of salt.

• MoreWidgets
• CanvasClasses - and discussion of proposed new first-class layout
• DevelopmentDone
• DevelopmentDeclined
• Themes - centrally control how widgets look like - I'm undecided about this
• SizeHandling - the way some GUIs handle layout

Short cut handling

For menus (and perhaps for other widgets too) it is very handy to have short cuts (like alt F for the File menu entry). For the API it would be nice if the widget itself could decide which short cuts it wants to register for. We could even use something like Menu(['_File', '_View', 'F_orget'], underscore_shortcuts=True) and make the widget do the work.

Problems:

• The widgets that should recieve the short cut are not in the focus and don't get a keypress call.
• The right place to handle these keys may vary (top level, dialog, menu (not menu item)).
• We don't know where the widget is and how to switch the focus in all the surrounding widgets

Current plan for Development:

• Include shortcut keys in the Canvas objects rendered by widgets.
• Include position information and shortcut information in the CompositeCanvas object's "child" list.
• Overlays would drop shortcuts from their background widget (since they can't focus background)
• Implement container interface for all composite widgets.
• All shortcuts and a way to set focus is now available from the topmost composite widget.
• Would not allow shortcuts from widgets that are not visible (IMHO a good thing)