Re: need some suggestions for good IDE UI

[Gustavo Giráldez <gustavo giraldez gmx net>]

Hi,

On Wed, 2002-08-28 at 17:52, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm helping with a rewrite of hIDE a Haskell IDE.
> 
> http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d99josve/hide/
> 
> This time its going to have a nice GUI. So inspired by the new gnome
> interface guide and anjuta's nice interface, I set about playing with
> new designs in glade.
> 
> I've run into a problem. I want to have various kinds of pages: editor,
> search results, TODO/FIXME lists, documentation pages, terminals etc.
> 
> I like the anjuta way of allowing you to use tabs free floating windows
> or docked pages. However each of these different pages will want to have
> different menu tool bar items. 
> 
> So where do I put the menus & toolbars? There need to be some global
> project related items and some specific to a particular page.

I think you're talking of anjuta1 here.  But if it's anjuta2 you're
refering to, then you should be able to do this relatively easily with
the GdlDock widget.  Just deriving your specialized toplevel dock object
(from GdlDock) should suffice.  Probably you will need some API
additions to the current implementation, but I would be willing to do
them if this proves to be useful (and doesn't get specific).  The
GdlDock widget is in the gdl module (in CVS).

HTH,
Gustavo


> 
> Kylix uses a separate top level menu / toolbar window:
> http://www.drbob42.com/gif/Kylixongnome2full.jpg
> 
> But it doesn't need page specific items so it can put them all in the
> top window. It seems odd to put menus & toolbars inside a notebook page,
> which is another choice.
> 
> I guess you would need a concept of the current editor page so that a
> search or a compile action applies to the right thing.
> 
> Should I just go with all top level windows and let the user & window
> manager deal with it? It is nice to have tabs or some similar device to
> arrange screen space when you have lots of editor & documentation pages
> open.
> 
> What do you suggest? 
> 
> BTW if there is a more specific UI list that might deal with such an
> issue issue I'd be happy to move the discussion there.
> 
> Duncan
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