Subject: Re: Abstract dialogs.
From: Martin Sevior (msevior@mccubbin.ph.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Sep 28 2000 - 16:48:27 CDT
On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, Ithamar R. Adema wrote:
> <SNIP>
> >Since I've now suggested this effort, I'm also aware that it's my work to
> >give directions or suggestions (more or less). I *think* I know how it
> >should be done (it's not without it's merits to have been called a "C++ god"
> >in the AbiWord devlist :-) ). But unless I have you support or engagement on
> >this one, it's just tossing work down the drain.
>
While I would love to able to write a dialog once for every platform and
leave it, I shudder to think of the amount of work this will require. In
writing the gtk front ends for the dialogs I've often had to track down
obscure little details of things like which expose events gets called in
what order and numerous other little gtk weirdnesses. It seems hard to
believe you C++ gods can encapsulate all those subtlies in a cross
platform framework. However I asume you are aware things like this...
> I have enough time at the moment to be able to discuss things with you, and
> it looks like I'll have a reasonable amount of time available soon to do
> actual development. I'm nowhere near an AbiWord expert but I'm willing to
> learn and spend time on that. However, I've used my share of "portable" GUI
> frameworks, mostly C++ stuff, and I've got 8 years actual C++ experience,
> so that might help ;o)
> Please feel free to mail me off-list if you want to discuss anything.
>
Please leave the email on list. I'd like to read about you guys are
planning. As I said I can't imagine this will work so I'm interested to
see why you think it will.
As someone who has done quite a number of gtk dialog front ends I don't
think the the GUI code is all that hard. I can normally knock one off in
less than 10 hours. The HARD part of writing a dialog is getting the xp
backend code right.
Look at Lists. 95% of the sweat in that dialog is in the backend code.
>
> >Please, comment. It *would* probably mean that AbiWord would be in a state
> >of flux for a while (regading dialogs), but the benefits would surely
> >outwheight the extra work, or?
>
I love it when someone else produces a platform specific dialog. Its
usually a little bit of straight forward work to port it to gtk. GUI stuff
is easy, doing the xp backend stuff is hard. If someone else has already
done that well its a straightforward job to produce the gtk GUI code. It's
even fun with Glade.
Personally I'd much rather you guys look at things like:
1. The final dialogs.
(Borders and shading), (Headers and footers), (styles), (page setup),
(page numbers). If you produce a windows dialog for any of these I promise
the a gtk equivalent will be quickly produced.
2. Helping Kevin Atkinson make his Pspell system cross platform. Lots of
nice juicy C++ challenges here too. He wants to be able to dynamically
load libraries in C++ in Unix, Windows etc etc.
However as always its your time :-)
Cheers
Martin
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