More ACD GUI bits

[Peter Rice]

James Bonfield writes:

>In addition to the previous note, here's my proposed additions to the ACD
>syntax. Forgive the woolly use of terms - I'm new to emboss and so don't know
>the correct terms for acd components.

>New types "frame" and "page". These are useful for graphical environments that 
>want to group questions together in logical blocks. The frame attribute could
>be added to any other type. An example shows this best:

Something like this would be very useful for me too. I am looking into
defining
EMBOSS applications in SRS.

>frame: seqs [
>    info: "Select sequences"
>]
>
>sequence: sequencea [
>    param: y
>    type: any
>    frame: seqs
>]

This is similar to the way SRS handles options at present, so I could live
with it.

But there may be a simpler way, which was planned in the early days of EMBOSS
but not yet implemented.

group: seqs [ info: "Select sequences" ]

sequence: sequencea [ ..... ]

endgroup: seqs

Like your 'frames', groups could be nested.

>page is much the same thing, except it would represent pages on a tabbed
>notebook. For ultimate flexibility we should not disallow hierarchial
>definitions, just as long as they're in the correct order. For example:
>
>page: sequences [
>    info: "Sequences"
>]
>
>frame: seqs [
>    page: sequences
>    info "Select sequences"
>]

This can be a simple extension:

group: sequences [ info: "sequences" type: page ]

group: seqs [ info: "Select sequences" ]

sequence: sequencea [ ..... ]

endgroup: seqs

endgroup: sequences


ACD should allow missing endgroups, but -acdpretty should put them in :-)

All options within a group would be defined together in the ACD file, and
prompted for  together. This will keep dependencies in the right order to
simplify GUIs.

Also, when run from the command line and prompting the user the group "info"
text can be used as an extra prompt.

Peter

-- 
------------------------------------------------
Peter Rice, LION Bioscience Ltd, Cambridge, UK
peter.rice at uk.lionbioscience.com +44 1223 224723