Getfile.gadget update

In light of the recent ASL requester discussion, I'd also like to draw the OS developers' attention to the fact that the getfile.gadget tags are not on par with the ASLFR_ tags. So in practice, although getfile.gadget wraps around the ASL filerequester, it provides less functionality.

For example, the ASLFR_InitialShowVolumes tag lets me open a filerequester with the list of volumes displayed automatically. But when using the getfile.gadget, there's no corresponding GETFILE_InitialShowVolumes tag and I cannot provide similar behaviour in my filerequesters.

I guess it shouldn't be too much work to add new tags to getfile.gadget so that the functionality of filerequesters is identical, regardless of whether you use ASL or ReAction.

@trixie

Personally, I think adding all of the ASL tags to getfile would be overkill, but a list of the most important ones would be handy.

Simon

@Rigo

Still, we do need a few I'm sure some tags are not needed because these values are either passed to ASL from the gadget (ASLFR_Window, ASLFR_Screen) or can be taken from system defaults (ASLFR_Locale) or ASL prefs. Certain values are hardcoded in getfile, like ASLFR_SleepWindow being always set to TRUE, which I personally prefer but some other programmers may not.

So I'm for adding a meaningful set of tags that put getfile in line with ASL function-wise.

While I have your attention here, I have a small suggestion to make. In checkbox.gadget, the CHECKBOX_TextPlace tags accepts a value of PLACETEXT_LEFT or PLACETEXT_RIGHT. These values come from gadtools, and I often have to #include <libraries/gadtools.h> just to be able to use the two values. Consider that new programmers will see little relation between gadtools and ReAction, and so will spend some time trying to figure out why these two values generate compile errors - especially as the checkbox autodoc makes no mention of it. I suggest putting PLACETEXT_LEFT and PLACETEXT_RIGHT to the checkbox include file.

I'm not too familiar with the getfile.gadget, but shouldn't it be easy for the child (in this case, the ASL requester) to inherit any tags that getfile.gadget doesn't use itself? Similar mechanisms exist in MUI for example, so as many tags as you like can be passed to the parent object, which will pass them to the child if they're not relevant to the parent. I don't think each tag should have to be implemented twice for this...

@Daedalus

Well, in fairness, passing ASLFR_SleepWindow to the getfile object doesn't really smack of obviousness.

Yes, it could be stated in the autodoc that ASL tags could be passed, but I think that would confuse the user, as there is no other part of the OS that allows "alien" tags to be passed and expected to work.

Any tags passed to Getfile should be GA_xx and GETFILE_xxx to avoid such confusion IMO.

Simon

@Rigo

It would also be worth noting in the autodocs for ASL and getfile that as we have ASL prefs (where users can adjust requester appearance and behaviour according to their needs), programmers should only provide tags that do not override the ASL prefs defaults. Unless there's a reason to override them, of course.

@trixie

I thought there was a note about that in the AutoDocs already, if there isn't then of course there should be!

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Adding #include <libraries/gadtools/h> to the checkbox header will be the easy least-risk solution to that I think.

I've seen other such non-obvious things when trying to deal with IFF files - the MAKE_ID #defines are all over the place (mostly in the DataTypes class headers, which isn't necessarily where you will be looking for them when parsing IFF files yourself)

@Chris

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Just checked to be sure - there isn't.

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I agree.