[Gazpacho] Proposal: option to add VBox, HBox and Table around existing elements

[Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri]

Hello,

Maybe the title, even being huge, is not descriptive at all... so
let's try to make it clear. Lorenzo already knows about it, since I've
explained the idea before at GUADEC-2006.

Idea is simple: sometimes it's not clear if things would be best laid
out in horizontal, vertical or tabular fashion. So there should be an
easy way to allow users to change this layout when required.

Implementation is also simple: change the placeholder to be a
container, with fixed positioning. So you will be able to put any
widget there, without any layout (hbox, vbox, table). Then you would
be able to select widgets inside and add a layout, then the
corresponding box would add around.... if no widgets were selected,
just the parent placeholder/container, then this would be replaced by
the corresponding box. If user wants to break the layout, it would
then revert to placeholder/container.

Use cases: user want to try both horizontal, vertical and tabular layouts.
 * NOW: we have to add the layout (vbox, hbox or table) and than add
widgets. To try the other layouts, we should remove widgets (maybe cut
& paste into another area) and add them again.
 * AFTER: we add widgets to some area (what we use as placeholder
now), then we apply one layout. To try other layouts, just break the
layout and add the new one.

References: Qt Designer (free software, try it) does almost this. The
basic idea of layout were extracted from there. However it imposes
some limitations, like you cannot add widgets to a existing layout
(vbox, hbox, table), you always have to break it, add widgets and lay
things out again. That's not that good... we could do better in
Gazpacho having it to be optional.

So, here is my idea, what do you think?

-- 
Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri
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