[haiku-development] Re: z-order in input dispatching and drawing

On 9/3/2011 11:33, pulkomandy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

On 2011-09-03 at 17:57:30 [+0200], Stephan Assmus<superstippi@xxxxxx>
wrote:

"aView isn't added in front of any other view"

This "in the front" here implies z-order to me.

Anyway, I still don't see why we couldn't define an order on the views,
even if Be didn't. Beside the endless bikesheding on which side of the list
should be front, and which should be back, of course :).

The use case I have in mind is something like an MDI interface. For
example, a tool similar to Cortex but showing complex devices instead of
just nodes. Each device (VST ?) would have its own view to draw in, add
controls, etc. And they could be connected together to build a complex
effect.
With Z-Order, it's easy to handle the sibling VST-views, allow them to
overlap and make the active one topmost, almost like windows. Is there a
way to achieve something like this without z-order, and getting events at
the right place ?
When I need to do something like that, I create virtual layers inside one view and call the draw functions for those layers in the proper order - I also, naturally, redirect input myself.
I think I released an early stand-alone version of something quite similar into the wild many many years ago (http://bebits.com/app/4393).
I'm building LoonCAFE which has a proper idea of layers, and stays closer to the real API rather than mimicking it... no where near ready for prime time, and not stand-alone. 

--The loon

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