🚀 go-pugleaf

shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson) writes:
> How about a "filerequester.library?"


Stuart, with all due respect, I would like to make one important point:


	Graphical UI != File Requester in a Library


How about instead of a "filerequester.library", we create a shared
library named "intuitiontools.library", which contains some high-level
user interface tools for intuition.  A File Requester, code to manage
menus (I seem to remember you write some really fine menu management
code that would go nicely into this library), tools to make building
requesters easier, compound Intuition gadgets (such as scroll bars)
built using Intuition's atomic gadgets, etc.

To me, Intuition's biggest problem is that it doesn't provide enough
support for a lot of higher-level UI stuff.  A shared library
containing code to do a lot of this stuff will 1) save programmers a
lot of work, 2) result in more efficient use of system resources since
only one copy of the code will be shared among multiple applications,
3) Bring more UI standardization to Amiga programs, 4) Allow hackers
to customize the "Standard" interface using SetFunction(), and 5)
Allow the UI of all application programs on the system to be upgraded
merely by upgrading the library.

A bigger problem with the Intuition + graphics libraries is that the
only text support outside the console device (which is basically
terminal emulation) is Text().  A text.library which contained code to
manage text buffers + the necessary display handling code which would
allow you to attach a text object to a window or gadget would be a
wonderful tool for application developers as well.  I suspect the
reason the Mac has such wonderful word processors and DTP packages is
that the Mac OS (as it were) gives developers a lot of system support
for text handling.  A primary component of the Andrew Toolkit (a user
interface toolkit for Unix + X11 that was developed here at the ITC)
is its Text object.


>                 Stuart Ferguson         (shf@well.UUCP)
>                 Action by HAVOC


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