[Dev] 0.4 UI Design proposal using unmodified wxWidget's widgets

[John Anderson]

I read through the proposed UI Design documents for Chandler, with an 
eye towards how difficult it would be to implement using unmodified 
wxWidget's widgets.

We are currently using wxList for Mimi's summary table. Unfortunately, 
wxList doesn't allow an icon to be displayed in any column except the 
first, nor does it have the ability to display graphics in column 
headers.  It looks like wxGrid would be a better widget for the summary 
table, since wxGrid allows flexible display of the contents of any cell 
of the table. On first glance, the only problems I saw were the 
inability to display graphics in column headers, and perhaps the display 
of floating collections in the summary table.  It would probably be 
possible to modify wxGrid to allow more flexible display of column headers.

We are currently using wxTree for the sidebar. Unfortunately, wxTree 
doesn't allow for arbitrarily flexible display of the contents of the 
tree, and the current design currently is not hierarchical, but instead 
is a list.  We could probably gain some flexibility with the display by 
using wxGrid, at the expense of no hierarchy, which might be a better 
approach for 0.4.

I looked briefly at the proposal for the detail view, but it didn't seem 
to be spec'd out for enough scenarios for me to have a good idea about 
the best way to implement it with wxWidgets. There are a variety of 
possibilities, which include wxGridBagSizer, wxHtmlWindow, or a number 
of specialized widgets living inside our existing container blocks.

Overall, I think with a little more help from the UI Design team, we'll 
be able to begin to move forward and made good progress quickly.

John