[Pipet Devel] node pallet UI

[J.W. Bizzaro]

(LET ME KNOW IF SOMEONE WANTS TO PROGRAM THIS FOR US.)

Pipers,

One of the features for Pied/Piper (actually going back to the days of Loci
and TULIP) that I have been tossing around for a while is a node pallet.

Iconic/graphical programming environments typically have a window frame that
is, in effect, a pallet of icons (nodes) that can be added to the program.  I
have considered adding this directly to the Pied/Piper UI, but I think it
would clash with my "window in a window in a window" paradigm for Pied/Piper,
and perhaps it would make Pied/Piper much bigger than it should be.  So, I
think we should make a separate UI.  And that's cool, cuz that's what the DL
is designed for.

The node pallet should have search features and a clear indication of where
the node is located.  The best example of this is Napster and Gnutella.  It
would primarily be a clist (columned list) widget with a list of nodes.  There
should also be a way to eliminate or condense a list redundant nodes.

Here is a rough sketch of what I am thinking about:


   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | NAME                 | LOCATION                 | CONNECTION SPEED   |
   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | (+) * My Node                                                        |
   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | (+) * Your Node                                                      |
   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | (+) * Their Node                                                     |
   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Click on the (+) of "Your Node"...

   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | NAME                 | LOCATION                 | CONNECTION SPEED   |
   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | (+) * My Node                                                        |
   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | (-) * Your Node                                                      |
   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   |     * Your Node      | some.domain.com          | T1                 |
   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   |     * Your Node      | some.other.domain.com    | 56K                |
   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | (+) * Their Node                                                     |
   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Lets say that the * represents and icon.  Then, the user can drag and drop the
icon onto some windowlet in Pied/Piper or some other UI compatible with the
DnD protocols.

DO WE HAVE ANY TAKERS?  This would be done in GNOME/GTK.  It doesn't have to
be in Python, but I would prefer it.

Cheers.
Jeff
-- 
J.W. Bizzaro                                           jeff at bioinformatics.org
Director, Bioinformatics.org: The Open Lab     http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff
"All those scientists--they're all alike!  They say they're working for us,
but what they really want is to rule the world!" 
  -- Angry Villager, Young Frankenstein
--