Next: External Tools Up: Conclusion Previous: Epilogue

# Missing features

There are some missing features in XF . Future releases will hopefully contain:

- undo/redo.
  Allowing an undo/redo in an program like XF is almost a ``must''. This is hard to do, as it can make the program slower, and the basic design does not support this.
- configuration via send.
  Right now, the application that should be modified with XF

  must be loaded together with XF . This was a design decision. It will be changed to allow the parallel manipulation of many applications with one XF . This gets more and more important with the increasing use of send to connect different Tcl/Tk applications.

- support for specific interface styles.
  XF makes no assumptions (and provides no special support) for certain styles of interfaces. One interface style that should definitely be supported more is the design of forms. This will include an automatic layout, a validation check for entered data and an automatic connection between fields and forms.
- drag&drop.
  The ability to drag&drop widgets and groups of widgets will be added in a future release. This will be used to rearrange the widget layout, and to define connections between widgets (i.e. connecting a scrollbar to a listbox). The problem is the drag&drop between different applications/toplevels, and the general visualization of this drag&drop. Right now, the Tcl/Tk distribution does not provide support for this, like a general drag&drop protocol.
- default parameter settings.
  There should be a way to define default parameter settings for widgets. Changes to a default parameter setting should be automatically applied to all widgets that where configured with this default parameter setting,
- support for debugging.
  Right now debugging is not supported. There exists a small extension to Tcl that allows the debugging of Tcl

  programs. It should be examined if this feature can be used and embedded into XF .

- support for other languages & widget sets.
  XF was originally designed to support the development of Tcl/Tk applications. Of course, this will always be the major aim of XF , as Tcl/Tk is used to implement XF . But it should be possible to create C code for parts of the application code. It should also be possible to use XF as a sort of abstract interface builder that is able to create code for other widget sets than Tk (i.e. ).

XF is still in development, and new features are permanently added. If a user has specific wishes or finds bugs, he can contact me to get this into the next release. With this paper, the internal interface is documented, and I hope that users will contribute new functionality.

Comments are welcome....

Next: External Tools Up: Conclusion Previous: Epilogue