window-system independent GUI specifications...

I was bored on the plane ride home, so I started writing some of the generic UI code instead of documentation. :) Basically, this is similar to the glyph stuff andy did, but pops up in its own window instead of being embedded in a buffer or gutter area. Basically, it works like this: (defvar test-ui '(window :type dialog :items ((tab-control :homogeneous t :items ((box :orientation vertical :tab-label (label :text "vertical") :items ((label :text "Vertical") (label :text "Box stacking"))) (box :orientation horizontal :spacing 10 :items ((label :text "Horizontal box") (label :text "stacking"))) (box :orientation vertical :items ((radio-group :items ((button :type radio :text "Item 1") (button :type radio :text "Item 2") (button :type radio :text "Item 3") (button :type radio))))) (box :orientation vertical :items ((button :type check :text "Item 1") (button :type check :text "Item 2") (button :type normal :text "Item 3") (button :type toggle))) (text :editable t :word-wrap t :file (locate-data-file "COPYING")) (text :editable t :face display-time-mail-balloon-enhance-face :word-wrap t :text "Text with a face on it")))))) (build-ui test-ui) (show-ui test-ui) I don't have any of the keymap stuff in there yet, but this is all written in lisp for the GTK case, so that will be relatively simple to add. The one thing I don't like is the radio-group requirement. I would prefer to have used the :selected bit, but updates were a real problem there. You can get away with it in the menu because you can update them just before you pop them up, but with long-lived visible widgets, you'd want it to update asynchronously. I didn't want to use an idle timer, because that seemed like it would chew up a huge amount of CPU usage, etc. Then again, I hate the :selected bits for radio buttons anyway. :) -Bill P.