To look at the problem another way:
if you were going to build a chat app in almost any GUI toolkit, I guarantee you the way you'd build it isn't to have a scroll cotnainer filled with individual widgets.
Even if that scroll container was annotated with extra API calls to add/remove etc.
There's an internal optimization layer in "detailed-list-esque" widgets that is consistent on almost every platform.
But even if they don't look the same, they can be the same widget. They're just variations of the same widget.
Then I would proceed with the change of Gtk to ListBox and implement the Windows detailedlist.
How would I go about expanding the detailedlist language to support arbitrary (yet uniform) widgets?
How would I go about expanding the detailedlist language to support arbitrary (yet uniform) widgets?
My suggestion would be to get the "simple" version working first - i.e., the current constant "icon plus primary text plus secondary text" layout.
because the handling of 'customized' layouts will definitely come as an extension of how "simple" layouts are implemented.
I also looked into DetailedList some more. I have been playing with the Android Material UI library, and the "Lists" in it are rather lacking. Plus, apparently I now need to better-understand an Android Fragment vs. an Android Activity.
More updates probably within a week, maybe sooner; that's my micro status update.
Sounds like progress, if not yet productive
I emailed an Android-y friend to get more help & advice on the lists thing.
One question I have is... can/should we use a list of Android "Cards" in DetailedList?
The Cards within the Material UI library are quite full-featured, including a swipe to dismiss behavior that feels very native to me.
Enjoyable swipe behavior https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/25457/114655599-597d8c80-9ca1-11eb-89e4-a861020ff989.png
Great question. I can bring that to my Android-y friend. Is this the list of chats, or is it each chat itself?
Maybe "Twitter clone" would be a better analog
each message has an icon of the author; the authors name; and the text of the actual message.
There might also be actions, additional media etc - but for the short term, just icon, name and message will suffice.
(i.e., 3 messages in a row from the same person don't get displayed with 3 icons)
The Beeliza demo on macOS is an example of this in action
I have no real answers to offer yet except to say these are great questions.
It's not clear to me that a Material UI "List" is exactly what you're looking for either though with DetailedList.
Well, for the Twitter clone case, I guess it is.
:-)