Re: Gnoga - The GNU Omnificent GUI for Ada

[David Botton <david@botton.com>]

> Is there a GUI tutorial coming soon

Everything so far are GUI tutorials, but I think you want something that looks closer to a VB setup

>, I am very interested in making views appear and disappear with button presses, data be updated in labels on the screen etc. and also for positioning of widgets etc.

The next tutorial on forms will I am sure be what you are looking for. I hope to have time to do it today. I've been working on binding some remaining parts, for example last night I added the ability to create autocomplete lists for inputs and fieldsets for group form elements.

The example will show you how to create and interact with form elements, etc.

As for more about positioning, I think a full tutorial on that alone is very called for and will add it to the list now and see if I can skip ahead and do that sooner rather than later.

In the mean time, to "manually" position anything anywhere, after creating your element do:

My_Button.Position (Fixed);
My_Button.Top (10);
My_Button.Left (10);

One you change the Position system to Fixed you can then place an element any place you want.

The default is Position (Static). Which means elements are added on after another at the bottom of the view as you add them. If they are block elements they take an entire row, if inline they are placed one after another from left to right.

You can change the default Display of an element to be inline or block using: My_Element.Display (block); or My_Element.Display (inline);

I realize this may be too much info for now :) I am adding View types that allow for all sorts of automatic positioning, columns, etc. in the near future.

When I get the positioning tutorial done it will all make more sense and can see how simple it can be.

As for hiding and displaying Views. Views are like any other element and can be placed in to other Views, styled, etc. The default create does make it resize and take up the entire window if the window is the parent. So given that you can have many views ( or any element) and display and hide each as desired using:

My_View_or_Element.Hidden; or  My_View_or_Element.Hidden (False);
This will make an element be completely hidden from view and take no space on the page.

or

My_View_or_Element.Visible (False); or  My_View_or_Element.Visible);
This will make an element not be visible but it will still take up the same space it did before on page.

I'll make sure there are examples of all the above in coming tutorials.

David Botton