[sldev] Re: New Viewer Shell Proposal

[John Hurliman]

Argent Stonecutter wrote:
> Now on a completely different issue: I agree ... there are definitely 
> support issues going to native widgets. But not using native widgets 
> is really hurting SL's ability to support multiple top-level windows 
> and there are definite user-interface problems on MacOS because of 
> SL's non-standard key bindings. Do you see a way to address these 
> problems inside the current framework? The Linden proposal seems to be 
> going in a completely different direction. 

For the second problem I think I can see a solution; changing the 
keybindings on OSX. You could even take it a step further and make them 
configurable through an XML file, which doesn't require porting the 
viewer to Tk. Question about the Tk/QT/GTK (why hasn't anyone mentioned 
GTK?) rewrite though, how does fullscreen work? Generally, to make the 
integration work you create an OpenGL rendering surface somewhere inside 
of a traditional window, so you wouldn't have the ability to switch to 
fullscreen (using the traditional OpenGL methods at least). I know with 
DirectX (like my SculptedPreview program) you can draw UI elements on 
top of a 3D rendering surface, but I haven't tested what happens in 
fullscreen or whether that is supported outside of DirectX/XNA.

John Hurliman