[nylug-workshop] can't make meeting tomorrow

[Dan Crosta]

Well if someone wants to get into algorithms, Rows and Columns are ready to be 
rewritten to use some common sizing code. I've sketched out an algorithm for how 
they might work, which I think covers all the cases, but I haven't thoroughly 
tested it in theory, nor written any code for it. Another option is to pursue 
integrating the python logging module into Engine and into the drawables in 
DTK-ish ways. Someone else expressed some interest in supporting emacs-style 
keybindings, which are basically key chords of ctrl-<foo>.


For the first, check out the algorithm I wrote up at

   https://firefly.student.swarthmore.edu/trac/wiki/DtkFlexSizingAlgorithm

I wrote the algorithm to allow Rows and Columns to let the programmer specify a 
min size and a max size for elements; This leads to some complications when the 
sum of min sizes is greater than the available space or when the sum of max 
sizes is less than the available space. I'm not convinced it's necessarily a 
requirement to support these features. Instead someone might want to write up 
and implement an algorithm that always allocates all available space, and lets 
certain elements be fixed-size, and the rest be variable-sized. With a little 
clever object hierarchy work, these two algorithms could live side-by-side in 
DTK, even within an application.



Integrating Python's logging module should be relatively straightforward, and 
may not sound that interesting, but would greatly improve the flow of DTK 
development, since you could add debugging/trace outputs throughout DTK and user 
applications and not get finer-grained control over what is logged and to where. 
Logging would need to get integrated into Engine, Drawable and eventually as 
development continues into the concrete Drawable classes as well.



Adding support for more/new keys (in all likelihood Ctrl-<foo> appears to DTK as 
a single key press, or possibly as <foo> with a modifier) requires some 
experimentation with curses and some work in CursesEngine. If anyone knows much 
about curses or is interested in learning (there's a good guide here [1]), a 
rewrite of key mapping in CursesEngine would be a Good Thing (TM). I've 
explained to Peter how the key input currently works, so if anyone is interested 
in this, he might be able to give you a hand.


That's kind of a lot, I realize, but any help any of you can offer with DTK 
would be awesome! I'm realizing that life after college only pretends to have 
more free time than life in college, so I haven't made as much progress on this 
project as I'd have liked.

- d


[1] http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/



Peter C. Norton wrote:
> Dan,
> 
> Any word on the bugs that were sent to you? I'm not sure if it's that
> important athat you've fixed anything. I know that you've been busy,
> but maybe fixing some of the dtk bugs would be a good exercise for the
> workshopw while everyone's in the same room. Is there anything you'd
> call a highest priority?
> 
> -Peter
> 
> On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 10:01:59AM -0500, Dan Crosta wrote:
>> I'm leaving town on Wednesday morning so I'll be busy packing and 
>> organizing my life tomorrow night. Sorry to skip it again  : \
>>
>> - d
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>