Introduction

This page describes how the new event handling system works, since the system is still work in progress it might be out of date with the actual code. It also contains some ideas that might change later on. Some parts are explained in the interface and will be integrated in this document later.

Since the event handling code hasn't been cast in stone yet some scenarios for solving the problem are discussed first and then the solution that is chosen in more detail.

After SDL has generated and event it needs to be turned into an event which the widgets can use.

The implementation solutions.

For the event handling we use a few use case scenarios and show the possible solutions.

The sample window

In our samples we use this sample window with the following components:

a window W
a container C
a button B

These are arranged accordingly:

 ---------------------
|W                     |
|                      |
|  -----------------   |
| |C              |^|  |
| |               |-|  |
| |  ----------   |#|  |
| | |B         |  | |  |
| |  ----------   | |  |
| |               |-|  |
| |               |v|  |
|  -----------------   |
|                      |
 ---------------------

Possible scenarios

The scenarios are:

An event that is wanted by none.
A mouse down event that should focus C and set the pressed state in B.
A mouse wheel event, which first should be offered to B and if not handled by B should be handled by C.

Pass the event through all queues

In this solution the event will be passed through all possible queues and tries sees where the event sticks. This following sections describe how the events are tried for this usage scenario.

Unhandled event

W pre child
C pre child
B pre child
W child
C child
B child
W post child
C post child
B post child

Mouse down

W pre child
C pre child -> set focus -> !handled
B pre child -> set pressed state -> handled

Mouse wheel

W pre child
C pre child
B pre child -> We can't scroll so ignore
W child
C child
B child
W post child
C post child -> Scroll -> handled

Pass the events in a chain like fashion

In this solution the events are send to the pre- and post queue of all but the last possible widget and to the child of the last widget. The pre queue will be send from top to bottom, the post queue from bottom to top.

Unhandled event

W pre child
C pre child
B child
C post child
W post child

Mouse down

W pre child
C pre child -> set focus -> !handled
B child -> set pressed state -> handled

Mouse wheel

W pre child
C pre child
B child -> We can't scroll so ignore
C post child -> Scroll -> handled

Evaluation

When using the first solution it's possible to drop the child queue since everything falls in pre or post. But there is a scenario that's a bit ugly to solve with the first solution:

Assume there is a listbox with toggle panels and on the panel there are a few buttons, the wanted behavior is:

if clicked on the panel it should toggle, which may or may not be allowed.
if clicked on a button in the panel, we want to make sure the panel is selected, which again may or may not be allowed.

With solution 2 it's rather easy:

Click on panel:

W pre child
C child -> Test whether we can toggle -> handled, halt = !toggled

Click on button in panel:

W pre child
C pre child -> Test whether we can select -> handled = halt = !selected
B child -> do button stuff -> handled

Since for the different clicks, different queues are triggered it's easy to add a different handler there.

With solution 1:

Click on panel:

W pre child
C pre child -> handler 1 -> if last in queue -> solution 2 C child

Click on button in panel:

W pre child
C pre child -> handler 2 -> if !last in queue -> solution 2 C pre child
B pre child -> do button stuff -> handled

Not that different from solution 2, the two handlers are installed in the C pre event. But we need to manually check whether we're really the last, which means the code to check whether there are more handlers at a lower level is needed for both solutions. In solution 1 this test needs to be done twice versus once in solution 2. Also the fact that the queues for the events are processed in reverse order on the way back sounds more initiative.

Processing the raw events.

This section describes how the events generated by SDL are send as our own events to the various widgets. The first step in sending an event is to decode it and send it to a registered dispatcher.

gui2::event::sdl_event_handler handles the SDL events.
gui2::event::dispatcher has the registered dispatchers.

In general a dispatcher is a window which then needs to send this event to the widgets. The dispatcher is just a simple part which fires events and finds a handler for the event. This is not to the liking of most widgets, they don't want to handle raw events but get a polished and clean event. No button up and down and then try to figure out whether it needs to act as if it was clicked upon, no simply op and down to change the appearance and a click event to do the clicking actions. And don't even try to convince a widget to determine whether this up event was a single or double click. Widgets like to sleep with nice dreams and not having nightmares where SDL events haunt them.

In order to remedy that problem there's the gui2::event::distributor class, it's the class to do the dirty job of converting the raw event into these nice polished events. The distributor is in general linked to a window, but a widget can install it's own distributor if it needs to know more of the raw events as still left in the polished events. At the time of this writing no widget needs this feature, but the toggle panel might need it.

After the distributor has polished the event and send it on its way to the widget the dispatcher needs to make sure the event is properly dispatched to the widget in question and also notify its parents by means of the previously described event chain.

Get the SDL events

The first step in event handling is getting the events in the first place. Events are generated by SDL and placed in a queue. The Wesnoth code processes this queue and thus handles the events. The part which does the first handling isn't described here since it's (secretly) intended to be replaced by the gui2::event::sdl_event_handler class. Instead we directly jump to this class and explain what it does.

The main handling function is gui2::event::sdl_event_handler::handle_event which as no real surprise handles the events. The function is a simple multiplexer which lets other subfunctions to the handling of specific events.

Todo:: Describe drawing and resizing once the code is stable and working as wanted in these areas.

Mouse motion events

If a dispatcher has captured the mouse it gets the event, no questions asked. If not it goes through all dispatchers and finds the first one willing to accept the mouse event.

This means a mouse event is send to one dispatcher.

Mouse button down events

Turning the mouse wheel on a mouse generates both an down and up event. It has been decided to handle the wheel event in the button up code so wheel events are here directly dropped on the floor and forgotten.

The other buttons are handled as if they're normal mouse events but are decoded per button so instead of a button_down(id) you get button_down_id.

Mouse button up events

The mouse wheel event is handled as if it's a keyboard event and like the button_down they are send as wheel_id events.

The other mouse buttons are handled the same as the down buttons.

Keyboard events

There are three types of keyboard events, the already mentioned mouse wheel events, the key down and key up event. When a key is pressed for a longer time several key down events are generated and only one key up, this means the key up is rather useless. Guess what, the multiplexer already drops that event so we never get it.

If the keyboard event is a mouse wheel event it's directly send to the dispachting queue; either the dispatcher that captured the keyboard or the last dispatcher in the queue.

If the event is a real keyboard action it's first tried as hotkey. In order to do so the target dispatcher is first determined, either the dispatcher that captured the keyboard or the last dispatcher in the queue. Then it's tried whether a hotkey and whether the hotkey can be processed. If the hotkey isn't processed the keyboard event is send to the dispatcher as normal keyboard event.

The hotkey processing will have several queues (to be implemented in 1.9):

global hotkeys that always work eg toggling fullscreen mode.
main screen hotkeys, these work when one of the dialogs is shown without other dialogs on top of them. These hotkeys are for example preferences. The main screens are:
- title screen
- game
- editor
- mp lobby
map screen hotkeys, these work when a map is shown eg toggle grid. The screens are:
- game
- editor
local hotkeys, these are hotkeys that only work in a specific dialog eg recruit unit only works in the game screen.

The queues are processed in from bottom to top in the list above, this allows an item to use a hotkey but have another handler function. Eg preferences in the editor might open another preferences dialog.

Todo:: The hotkeys need to be implemented like above in 1.9.

Todo:: This might change in the near future.

Event polishing and distribution

The event distributor has the job to find the widget that should receive the event and which event(s) to send from a single event. In general an event is first send to the widget as-is, sending the raw events allows other distributors to be nested between this distributor and the intended target widget. Or the intended widget might not really be the intended widget but another distributor that wants to dispatch the event internally.

However in the common cases this raw event isn't handled and the distributor needs to send the polished events. In the following sections the details of the conversion from raw to polished is described, it intentionally lacks the part of sending the raw events as well since it adds no value.

A widget can capture the mouse, which means all mouse events are send to this widget, regardless where the mouse is. This is normally done in a mouse down event (for a button) so all events following it are send to that widget.

Mouse motion

This section describes the conversion from a raw mouse motion to the polished events it can generate:

When the mouse is captured that widget will only receive motion events.

If not captured the code checks whether the widget underneath the mouse is the same widget as at the last motion if event. If so that widget gets a motion event. If not the widget that before was underneath the mouse pointer (if any) gets a leave event and the widget newly underneath the mouse pointer (if any) gets an enter event.

Mouse buttons

The mouse button code is a bit more complex and is separated in the various events to be send.

Mouse button down

Some things start simple, so does the event of pressing down a mouse button. All it does is send the event to the widget as one of the following events:

LEFT_BUTTON_DOWN
MIDDLE_BUTTON_DOWN
RIGHT_BUTTON_DOWN

Todo:
Validate the code it seems a down event with a captured mouse doesn't really work as wanted. (Rare case but should work properly.) In general the mouse event handling needs testing to see whether the proper events are send all the time.

Mouse button up

Simplicity ends here.

Todo:: Document further.

Mouse click

So the button up event has asked for mouse click, now we need to test whether the click will be a click or a double click. A double click is generated when the same widget is clicked twice in a short time and causes the following events:

Otherwise one of the following single clicks is generated:

To double click or not to double click

Wait a second, a widget has a field whether or not it wants a double click for a certain mouse button and now I see that it's bluntly ignored by the distributor. Indeed the distributor doesn't care about what the widget wants, it does what it wants and leaves the sorting out what's wanted to the dispatcher.

The problem is that in the chain events are send to one widget that may not be interested in a double click, but another widget in the chain is. There are several solutions to this problem:

Sending a click followed by a double click.
Sending a click with a tag field that it actually is a double click.
Send a double click and turn it into a click if the double click is unwanted.

The first solution has the disadvantage that a toggle panel likes a click and double click, the first click selects the second deselects and now the deselected panel gets a double click. When the panel now checks whether it's selected it's not and might take the wrong action upon it.

The second option is possible but would be rather intrusive in the code, since it would generate another event signature. Adding a signature just for this special case seemed a bit too much effort vs. gain. Also the widget needs to check whether a click is a click or a double click and choose a different code path for it. This in turn would mean a signal handler secretly might handle two events and lowers the transparency of the code.

The third option also adds some special case handling but the scope is limited and only one part knows about the tricks done.

The last option has been chosen and the dispatcher build the event chain and while building the chain it looks whether the widget wants the double click or not. It does this test by looking at the wants double click function and not test for a handler. The double click test function is made for this purpose and depending on the handler might again do the wrong thing. (A certain toggle panel might not want to do something on a double click but also not being deselected upon a double click. The latter to keep the UI consistent, a double click on a toggle panel might execute a special function or not, but always keep the panel selected. (That is if the panel can be selected.))