Re: [lmi] axes editing controls

[Greg Chicares]

On 2007-11-29 15:48Z, Vadim Zeitlin wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:36:44 +0000 Greg Chicares <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> GC> My mistake. Now I see that I have never understood wxChoice at
> GC> all.
> 
>  This control makes more sense from X11 point of view than from Windows one.
> In Win32 wxChoice is just a read-only wxComboBox but in X11-based UIs they
> are completely different controls: wxChoice was originally in fact a popup
> menu while wxComboBox was the same thing as under Windows.

Ah...perhaps I "learned" long ago that wxChoice was a popup menu,
and have ignored it since.

>  IOW, if we want to make it as convenient as possible for the users, we
> should be using the appropriate controls (wxSpinCtrl for the age, maybe
> wxRadioBox for axis like smoker and sex -- which is faster to use then a
> combo box because it doesn't require an extra click to drop down the list
> but you can select the value directly). If, however, our main goals are the
> uniformity of the interface and the simplicity of the code then wxChoice
> should be used. So while I do know how the controls look and behave on
> different platforms, I can't make this decision -- it's really the question
> of priority and so the decision should be yours.

Then I choose wxChoice.

Users would rarely use the controls that could be changed to
wxSpinCtrl, so convenience hardly matters in that case.

And I wouldn't substitute wxRadioBox for the controls that are by
nature enumerative. That would take up too much space. It might
not be much space for Gender, but it would be too much for State.

I wouldn't even use wxRadioBox for enumerations of modest
cardinality like Gender, because then the GUI might give users
the impression that the Gender and State axes are essentially
different. They're identical in nature and different only in
cardinality. The same can be said of Issue Age, even though it
might be considered range-integral rather than enumerative.
It is very desirable for the GUI to give users the (correct)
impression that axes are just axes. (Duration is slightly
different in that its cardinality is adjustable, but the GUI
clearly communicates that by providing an extra control for
adjusting its cardinality.)

Interface uniformity and code simplicity are both good reasons
on their own, but in combination they become a compelling reason
for using wxChoice only. So let's do that.