[zPE-dev] Minor GUI Changes + Gtk Widget Plan

[Tony Zhang]

Now the auto-complete will append 1 space on unique completion, which makes the subsequent auto-alignment easier (no need to type the extra space any more).

Replaced all underscores in the GUI command (only available in Emacs key-binding mode) to dashes for easy-typing.

I'll package the final release this Sunday, if there is no more bug reports between now and this Saturday.

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Gtk Widget Plan:

As I'm looking deep into the GtkTextView widget, I'm pretty sure we will need to replace it entirely (with our own version) to meet our specific requirement, such as highlight/prevent input after column 72. To make it efficient, the new textview widget cannot be written in python but need to be implemented in pure C + GTK and get wrapped with python API (python wrapper function calling C shared library). I will look into this (probably in fall or even later), but any one interested are welcome to contribute.

Georgia, you could also advertise it to the dept. mailing list, so that those who want to gain experience in GUI programming (in C + GTK) could contribute the zPE project.

One thing to keep in mind is that the API design should:
1) allow column operation (considered using a 2D array to store FB file)
2) use double-buffering technique and allow replacement of storage buffer alone (so multiple textview can share the same buffer)
3) be as fast as possible, preferably integrate AST parser (convert zPE/UI/zComp/zSyntexParser.py to C)
4) be as open as possible to allow future modification and enhancement
5) have unified signal system (avoid this: GtkTextView emit "cursor_move" on some cursor movement, but not all cases)

Best,
--
Tony (Chi Zhang)