
       		      WINGs - WINGs Is Not GNUstep

				   by

			  Alfredo Kengi Kojima 
			
			  kojima@windowmaker.org


   WINGs is a small widget set with the N*XTSTEP look and feel. It's API
is inspired in OpenStep and it's implementation borrows some ideas
from Tk. It has a reasonable set of widgets, sufficient for building
small applications (like a CDPlayer or hacking something like rxvt). It
also has other functions that are usefull for applications, like a
User Defaults like configuration manager and a notification system.

   The library is limited and it's design is a little sloppy, 
so it's not intended to build large or complex applications, like 
anything more complex than a CDPlayer. GNUstep should be used for such
applications.

   Since WINGs is written in C and is sort of low-level it is small
and faster than say, Motif or even Athena. Knowing Xlib will help you to 
workaround some of it's limitations, although you'll probably be able to 
write something like a trivial tic-tac-toe game without knowing much Xlib.

   Some of it's functions are designed to support the WindowMaker window
manager (see http://windowmaker.org) In fact, it's primary role is to
support WindowMaker. All other uses of it are just an added bonus.


Internationalization:
---------------------

   WINGs supports display of multibyte characters (kanji etc) without the
to specify any flags (ie: there is no way to disable i18n support).
Change ~/GNUstep/Defaults/WMGLOBAL to set the desired font set.


Widgets provided by WINGs:
--------------------------

- button (command button, radio, switch etc. - all buttons defined in OpenStep)
- label
- textfield
- frame
- window
- popup menu button
- scroller
- selection list
- browser
- slider
- scrollable view
- color well
- split view (only 2 subviews)

- input box
- file panel
- alert panel 

Planned:
--------

If you think you can code the following, please do. They are needed by
WPrefs.app, but the number of other things I have to do is huge.

- color panel
- font panel (the UI part is done. Might require a rewrite of the font list
  retrievel code)
- input method support. I have no idea of how to code it. People who use
different characters than ASCII will have trouble editing menus without it...


Wish list: (I don't have the know-how or time to do them)
---------------------------------------------------------

- text (with support for RTF)
- matrix (like NSMatrix)
- splitviews with more than 2 subviews
- font manager (like NSFontManager)
- finish file panel, open/save
- finish other wigets
- optimize list scrolling (XCopyArea() the area that's already drawn)
- InterfaceMaker?
