Perhaps you'd be interested in my unreleased tkwidgets library, its
in SVN. Basically, I am working on creating a framework to make it
much easier to make GUI objects. Part of that framework includes
things like resizing things with the mouse. I have that much
working but its buggy still. Once that gets ironed out, I plan on
making Pd versions of all the core Tk widgets, including the Tk
canvas. In tkwdigets there is already a [text] object that works
quite nicely, save a few bugs.I forgot to add, my experience with the iemgui code has told me that
they would be very difficult to improve, hence the tkwidgets lib.
Unfortunately, if it is not finished/stable, I am not interested in it as having to deal with Pd bugs in and of themselves is demanding enough on my time. On a flip side Scope~ external already has similar functionality which seems to me quite complete so it may be simply a matter of implementing that one (obviously it would only apply to iemgui objects as vanilla objects have no way of knowing their own size).
That said, I did spend most of today implementing Sarlo's feature as well as fixing buggy Tcl/Tk behavior (namely inability to show check marks in the edit menu which is so disheartening it is not even funny--I really think Pd needs to wean itself away from the Tcl/Tk abomination even if that means losing a good chunk of its externals before it can thrive).
NB: I left out "drop shadows" part as it seems quite redundant. I also changed how the rest of the code behaves/looks to make it visually cleaner/more consistent.
Apart from that latest update also includes edit menu highlighting (as 0.43 does to bypass Tcl/Tk buggy junk), improved shortucts for some of the calls, bugfix in the window list menu which for some reason omits parent window listing, and other minor cosmetic fixes (e.g. highlighting color changed to orange as I feel it is much easier on my eyes).
If interested, check out the latest snapshot at the usual place:
http://l2ork.music.vt.edu/main/?page_id=56
Cheers!