Re: GUI was Re: why Ada is so unpopular ?

[Jeffrey Carter <spam@spam.com>]

Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote:
> Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
>> Wait a minute. Aren't directories usually considered to be some kind 
>> of tree structure? Doesn't MSVC++ and the MFC supply some kind of tree 
>> widget for displaying things like directories? Seems like every time I 
>> pop up a directory on Windows, I see something that looks very 
>> reminiscent of a tree and one that looks surprisingly like the one I 
>> seem to recall was in the MFC. Maybe I'm wrong, but it looks to me 
>> like Microsoft might just be keeping some kind of tree data structure 
>> in place for handling directories. Not that the fact that Microsoft 
>> does something necessarily makes a recomendation for doing the same - 
>> but it would seem like it might not be all that painful for some apps.
> 
> You're right, but this doesn't work very well when you drop
> into a directory with thousands of files. A smart tree widget
> might just peruse "directory portions", where the tree widget
> is visible (perhaps a less than trivial exercise). But I suspect
> they take the easy way out, and require all entries to be loaded
> in to the widget's dynamic memory. Otherwise performance in large
> directory cases would not be so abysmal.

The Windows directory tree only shows directories; the thousands of 
files are not part of the tree. This helps reduce the size of the tree. 
The thousands of files are shown in the other pane of the window; as you 
note, it can take a long time to display all the files in a directory 
with many files.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"People called Romanes, they go the house?"
Monty Python's Life of Brian
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