RE : GNOME HIG and libglade2

From: Joaquin Cuenca Abela (e98cuenc@free.fr)
Date: Wed Feb 05 2003 - 17:48:08 EST

  • Next message: Mark Gilbert: "Re: [Fwd: Installation Problem]"

    Just to complete what others have said...

    Michael wrote:
    >
    > On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
    >
    > > > I also tend not to want more library dependencies.
    > > > What about adding this stuff only for the Gnome
    > > > build?
    > >
    > > This defeats the proposed purposes for using glade.
    > >
    > > Win32 has RC files to aide in the creation and storage
    > > of dialogs, created by DevC.
    >
    > RC files do not add an additional dependancy at runtime. The
    > resources are compiled into the executable. If I understand
    > how libglade2 works, you use glade as a GUI widget designer,
    > you pass the glade design or libglade2 during runtime which
    > then returns gtk2 widgets for the screen. The end result is
    > an extra step compared to what we do now.

    Yes.

    Now, that has 2 inconvenients:

    1) An extra dependancy (libglade)
    2) Overhead on the creation of the widgets

    Dom has already explained why 1) is not a problem. Virtually any user
    computer out there (except those on "laboratory condicions"...) that has
    gtk+-2 also has libglade. A remaining problem is that libglade requires
    libxml, so we have to drop expat on unix (my advice: go for it)

    2 is also not a problem. James measured the perceived overhead years
    ago, and it was absolutely lost in the noise... on a 486 computer.

    Making the "build the GUI" step at runtime instead of at build time has
    also some advantages, as you don't need to rebuild your application
    after each change in the GUI.

    For those that want to make the transition from the current state to a
    gladeified AbiWord, you may want to consider the use of one application
    that I developped a while ago. It converts automatically an application
    to glade. I've only tested it on little applications, so I guess that
    it's going to make AbiWord segfault if you try to degladeify it, but I
    can try to fix it as fast as possible if people have interest (that
    means taking a break on my b-trees variants research... :)

    My little application is at http://e98cuenc.free.fr/edalg/ if somebody
    wants to try it. To try it, just degladeify a little application, like
    gnome-mount.

    Good luck!

    Cheers,



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