Proposal: new menu layout, with examples

[James Bonfield]

On Mon, Apr 30, 2001 at 06:17:46PM +0100, Peter Rice wrote:
> Hi James,
> 
> > On the topic of groups - just a warning that we'll also be looking
> > at restructuring the ACD with the 'group:' type, which is now
> > sounding like a staggeringly confusing choice of word!
> 
> How about 'section' and 'endsection' ?

Agreed.

What about the attributes?
At present I've got:

type	   A choice between "frame" and "page".
	   Defaults to frame.
	   This controls whether the section should be a labelled frame or
	   a page in a notebook. The distinction only really matters for
	   GUI or WWW based systems. In Tcl the choice is pretty clear. In
	   WWW I'd expect a frame to be a table; a page is trickier to
	   implement (and may require javascript), but I've seen such things
	   done regularly.

info	   A heading for the frame or page. Defaults to ""
	   A page without a heading would look rather odd, but a frame
	   without a heading is OK - it's just a bordered block.

book	   Only needed for type:frame.
	   The notebook to associate this page to. Defaults to "", which
	   implies all pages are part of the same notebook. This is only
	   needed if a program wishes to make use of more than one tabbed
	   notebook, in which case this is used to determine which book a
	   page is within.

border	   Only needed for type:frame. Defaults to 1.
	   The border width of the frame.

side	   Only needed for type:frame. Defaults to top.
	   This is used for 'frame packing'. It is only needed if we wish
	   to express complex layout designs. Eg:

	   +----------------------------------+
	   |            Section1	      |
	   |   blah			      |
	   |   blah	   	              |
	   | +-------------+ +--------------+ +
	   | | Section2    | | Section3     | |
	   | |   blah      | |   blah       | |
           | +-------------+ +--------------+ |
           +----------------------------------+

I think perhaps the border and side attributes are overkill, and I haven't yet 
used them except in test ACD files. Naturally all of these are really just
"hints" to the interface, which may ultimately do whatever it prefers.

James
	
-- 
James Bonfield (jkb at mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk)   Tel: 01223 402499   Fax: 01223 213556
Medical Research Council - Laboratory of Molecular Biology,
Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 2QH, England.
Also see Staden Package WWW site at http://www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/pubseq/