OpenEuphoria

DOS Window Manager

• Posted by David Cuny <dcuny at DSS.CA.GOV> Apr 13, 1998
• 513 views

I've recently posted a program to the Euphoria Web page called WinMan. =
It provides the window manager services for a window's frame: =
maximizing, minimizing, resizing, dragging and closing. The look and =
feel is the monochrome "classic Macintosh", although color, and other =
look and feels will can supported.

The functionality of WinMan would typically be provided by any decent =
graphical OS (Win32/Mac/X Windows). I've coded the window manager =
because it provides a base to work on a platform independant API. It =
also lays a code base for porting that API to DOS.

As usual, WinMan is a "pre-alpha" demo. There are some *very* inefficent =
routines in the code. In the next version, I hope to incorporate Jiri's =
mouse routines and XOR graphics to make the drawing of the bounding box =
(used in dragging and resizing) much faster, as well as adding support =
for graphical mouse pointers. At some point, I expect to be asking the =
graphic experts to help me rewrite the "core" graphic toolkit.

The next release may very likely provide another look-and-feel (perhaps =
OpenLook) to ensure that the API isn't accidentally tied to the Mac look =
and feel. I'm also playing around with the idea of geometry managers =
(like Tk uses) to handle the low-level window layout.

This project will *not* intended to replace Win32Lib. In all likelihood, =
the top level API will look very much like Win32Lib, but support only =
the controls that can be reasonably ported to other operating systems - =
although all the controls that are currently in Win32Lib fall into that =
set.

Any comments/concerns/criticisms?

-- David Cuny