skinnable, portable widgets?

[Terry Reedy]

"Brandon Van Every" <vanevery at 3DProgrammer.com> wrote in message
news:JHXY9.4761$d66.442710 at newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
> Then you have not played any games that actually need GUI elements.
For
> instance, take a look at the Civilization-style games over the past
10

I presume here you mean both the standard, though disguised buttons
and display fields *outside* the graphical game play field and the
various pop-up lists and dialog windows that some games have.

> years.  Or any game with a fairly elaborate multiplayer lobbying
system.

As with Diablo II?

As a user, I would say the goal should be to have things work like (or
at least as well as) a commercial app's widgets without looking like
them, ie without breaking the game illusion.  Having seen some
abominations (a spastic main menu with flickering hilight, a pointer
that moves like its being dragged thru molasses with a rubber band) I
like the idea of skinning functional, debugged widgets.

I have no idea if this is sensibly possible with widget sets that
depend on the underlying OS.  You might take a look at
pyui.sourceforge.net: "Overview:

PyUI is a user interface library written entirely in the high-level
language python. It has a modular implementation that allows the
drawing and event input to be performed by pluggable "renderers". This
makes PyUI very portable and scalable. It can run in environments from
hardware accelerated 3D surfaces to regular desktop windows. PyUI was
originally targeted as a User Interface for games, but it has evolved
into a more general UI toolkit with applicability outside of games.
"

Terry J. Reedy