So I've decided that there will be 4 major foci of Doors CS 6:

:: Making it an app (duh)
:: Maximal compatibility
:: gCn and CALCnet2 - interconnectivity
:: Easy-to-use GUI tools

I'll focus on the fourth of these, easy to use GUI tools, for now. OK, I've decided that in order to make ASM programming as painless as possible for programmers, I'm gonna make DCS6 contain bcalls for common GUI functions. Something like this:

openGUIstack()
pushGUIstack()
popGUIstack()
closeGUIstack()
refreshGUI()

So what exactly is a "GUI Stack" and how am I going to use it? Let's imagine a theoretical program that has a large (ie fullscreen) window in the background, with a dialog that's in the foreground asking the user to confirm something. Firstly, you need to know that the Gstack will be a LIFO type stack - Last In, First Out. If you push 2,3,4, the first thing that will pop off is a 4, and the second thing is a 3. Once you pop something, it is removed from the stack. The Gstack will be a variable-size entity stored in an appvar that is created and initialized when openGUIstack() is called and cleared and deleted when closeGUIstack() is called. refreshGUI() will parse the Gstack and completely update the screen based on the contents of the stack. In other words, it will erase the screen, render the bottommost item in the stack, then the next up, until it reaches the top, to provide the layered-windows effect that the GUI will allow programmers to achieve. Now, the GUI stack is simply a series of entries in this format:

size (1 byte)
type (1 byte)
data (size-1 bytes)

To add an entry to the stack, you write it to some temporary mem, point to that with hl, and then call pushGUIstack(). Things you might want to push onto the stack: window title, sprite, text, input elements, buttons, etc. Once everything you want is on the stack, just call refreshGUI() to draw it all up. Even better, you can then call Mouse() and Doors CS will automatically parse the top Gstack entry, figure out the requisite hotspots, and handle all mouse-related stuff including various cursors, like arrow or text-edit, entry of text into GUI elements and modifications to the GUI stack, and then returning the values on the stack back to the program for processing. If you want to remove the top GUI element, such as the dialog box, simply call popGUIstack(). If you pop off the last element or call closeGUIstack(), the stack will be disabled and deleted. The GUI stack format is as follows;

-Header:defines window type and number of entries in group
---Element
---Element
---Element
-Header
---Element
---Element
---Element
---Element

I will post more detailed information as I come up with it. Feel free to provide feedback.

ok, sounds cool, if only I could understand half of it

Essentially, it should make writing a word processor as easy as pushing some stuff onto the Gstack, drawing, setting up some routines to call openFile() and saveFile(), and that's it. Maybe 400 bytes max

you should try or some USB compatibility allow thumb-drives, keyboards, and mice

Am I to understand that the GUI stack will act as the sprite routine for layered windows in a program? If so, that sounds pretty awesome and I bet it will incourage more windows-like programs.

not necessarily good

it almost sounds like it is an ASM thing though. Windows Programs are always in BASIC with ASM libs it seems][

That's exactly it. And rivereye, we mean windows-style applications, not shells.
Edit:

Code:

Here's a partial design:

That's pretty cool. I hope people will utilize this helpful tool. Jeez, this could completely change the look of many programs. (dialog boxes for exits instead of other screens, options menus that don't take up an entire screen)

Aye, that's my hope!

sounds like you are trying to make a widget-toolkit for the calculator, lol

Just don't forget about BASIC!!! - see if you can't make some basic-extra's too

add a Open/ExecLib interface to the app

Hmm, but that's 84 only.
Got a new entry for that big post, byte ID 16.

I was trying to convince Kerm to do this - he seems opposed to it at the moment, but like all ideas I suggest to him, he will eventually implement it.

It's a remote possibility, but I tend to avoid such things with BASIC 'cause then calcs without DCS won't be able to use them.

Then those calcs will just have to use DCS...

I think you should just do it with hooks, ala Omnicalc

OKOK, maybe I will...we shall see.

the z80 stack! yay, stack-ific!

But it's better than the regular word stack!!