Events

The following table makes an interesting comparison.

Framework	Events
GS	13
wxWidgets	197
XRC	0
HTML 4.0	17
HTML 5.0	37
MSIE 8.0	71
XUL/Firefox	55

Given all the duplication and the fact that there can only be “just so many” events that are really necessary to cover all needs, it would seem that the “correct” number of events for GX will likely end up at around 30-40.

The documentation for XUI and Java make it real hard to figure out how many events there are built-in. They are also extensible – on the plus-side this means you can roll your own if they are not there – but on the minus side that means that it sacrifices consistency and makes the programmer have to think more than probably they need to. Maybe the answer to extensibility is really to provide a single “custom event” type that will at least make it obvious what’s what.

Why does WX have so many event types? Well, take for instance button_clicked, checkbox_clicked, grid_cell_left_click, stc_marginclick, etc. These are essentially conjoining the idea of Component, clicked, entirely for reasons related to the underlying cpp implementation. However, since GX can keep track of the component all the “click types” can be collapsed back down to one clicked type event, and thus it should be able to present the WX menagerie in a less overwhelming fashion.