Feedback (wishes, design defects) on vizmenu, vizinfo

[fordprefect]

I started to use the modules vizmenu, vizdlg, vizinfo with the new Vizard5 beta. Therefore I post my comments here though this is most likely not an issue with the beta itself.

First let me say that I find the menu system a good and helpful feature. I especially like the option to add sliders or progress bars to it. But the menu is unfortunately in several respects not adhering to the standards (as used e.g. in the Vizard IDE). That is why all but the first item have to do with appearance and working of the menu system.

1. vizinfo.Infopanel should accept **kw parameters as many other classes do, and hand them over to the internal panel creation line:
   self._panel = vizdlg.GridPanel(skin=skin, window=window, **kw)
2. regular menu items are missing. BUTTONLABEL items have a special decoration, and BUTTON items need a click to the icon, so they are not ideal replacements
3. after selecting a menu item menu stays open. why? is this configurable? it should be IMHO
4. usually icons (as they come with CHECKBOX BUTTON RADIO) are in front of the menu item text, Vizard places them behind
5. RADIO, BUTTON and CHECKBOX only work when clicking the icon, not on the text (as is usual)
6. I did not find a way to define shortcut key combinations, nor a way to invoke the menu using Alt and then arrow keys.
7. I did not find a menu group separator
8. I did not find a description how to do a popup menu
9. It seems not to be easy (at least beyond my current knowledge) to extend (to subclass) the Menubar or Menu classes to achieve the desired results, because they are based on .add methods of other objects.

Hope you find this feedback useful. Other readers, please post some 'me too' messages if you like my suggestions, to add some weight. Thanks.

Best Regards, Walter

[Jeff]

Thanks for the vizinfo and vizmenu feedback.

1. How would you like to modify the panel at it's creation? Perhaps you can get the underlying panel using InfoPanel.getPanel() and call one of its methods.

8. Take a look at our vizpopup documentation for an example of windows style pop-up menu.

In case its useful, there are other GUI libraries (e.g PyQt, wxPython) available as python add-ons. Installation and basic examples are provided in the our Knowledge Base Addons section.

[fordprefect]

Hi Jeff,

thank you for the hints.

1. I want to set the theme for the underlying panel. I created a subclass which accepts such a parameter for it's __init__ method. Of course, for what I want to achieve, your approach is more then sufficient.

8. Obviously I have to refine my search strategies. I was searching Vizard help only for the term 'context menu', which did not really help.

Thank's again,
Best Regards! Walter