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There are some missing features in XF
. Future releases
will hopefully contain:
- undo/redo.
Allowing an undo/redo in an program like XF
is almost a
``must''. This is hard to do, as it can make the program
slower, and the basic design does not support this.
- configuration via send.
Right now, the application that should be modified with XF
must be loaded together with XF
. This was a design
decision. It will be changed to allow the parallel
manipulation of many applications with one XF
. This gets
more and more important with the increasing use of
send to connect different Tcl/Tk
applications.
- support for specific interface styles.
XF
makes no assumptions (and provides no special support) for
certain styles of interfaces. One interface style that
should definitely be supported more is the design of forms.
This will include an automatic layout, a validation check
for entered data and an automatic connection between fields
and forms.
- drag&drop.
The ability to drag&drop widgets and groups of widgets will
be added in a future release. This will be used to rearrange
the widget layout, and to define connections between widgets
(i.e. connecting a scrollbar to a listbox). The problem is
the drag&drop between different applications/toplevels, and
the general visualization of this drag&drop. Right now, the
Tcl/Tk
distribution does not provide support for this, like
a general drag&drop protocol.
- default parameter settings.
There should be a way to define default parameter settings
for widgets. Changes to a default parameter setting should
be automatically applied to all widgets that where
configured with this default parameter setting,
- support for debugging.
Right now debugging is not supported. There exists a small
extension to Tcl
that allows the debugging of Tcl
programs. It should be examined if this feature can be used
and embedded into XF
.
- support for other languages & widget sets.
XF
was originally designed to support the development of
Tcl/Tk
applications. Of course, this will always be the
major aim of XF
, as Tcl/Tk
is used to implement XF
. But
it should be possible to create C code for parts of the
application code. It should also be possible to use XF
as
a sort of abstract interface builder that is able to
create code for other widget sets than Tk
(i.e.
).
XF
is still in development, and new features are permanently
added. If a user has specific wishes or finds bugs, he can
contact me to get this into the next release. With this
paper, the internal interface is documented, and I hope that
users will contribute new functionality.
Comments are welcome....
Next: External Tools
Up: Conclusion
Previous: Epilogue
Harry Beker
Thu Feb 29 18:06:38 MET 1996