UI: Generalized List-Chooser

[Derek Atkins]

Right now Gnucash has a specialized 'commodity chooser' which has,
IMHO, a nice interface:

  1) a "combo-box" (yes, I know it's not really a GTK combo-box) that
     has the text of the current choice and a select button to change
     the choice.

  2) a chooser window that lets you choose from existing entries or
     choose to create a new one.

  3) a creation window to create a new commodity.

The problem is that all three widgets are specialized to choosing a
commodity.  I'd like to use the exact same type of widget to choose
other objects (such as Customers, Vendors, Jobs, Invoices, etc).

I feel that at least widget #1 can be generalized to any choice.  It
would be nice if #2 could be generalized as well, but I don't think
that's going to be quite as easy (although I can generalize it in my
particular case).

How would people feel about generalizing the chooser?  Is there a
better way to accomplish this task?  There are places where I'd like
to provide this three-tiered choosing/creation capability, but there
may also be times when I want to allow choices only from existing
entries.

Suggestions?

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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