Re: gnome desktop integration library

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> > This has never made sense to me - what would be not
> > able to go in gtk or 
> > other appropriate lib? There just isn't anything.
> > I'd say the definition 
> > of gtk is an API for writing GUI apps. So if
> > something is usually needed 
> > to write GUI apps, gtk should have it, or something
> > is busted.
>
> I requested last cycle for a help button to be put
> into the File Chooser dialog [1], and the general
> feeling I got back from the GTK people was that they
> didn't want a dependency on parts of the gnome desktop
> going in GTK.

So argue with them. If apps need this, it needs to be in GTK somehow.

I don't know what issues were raised, but there are already a bunch of 
dependencies on parts of GNOME in GTK. It matters exactly how it's done; 
apps should generally also work right if people have only KDE, on 
Windows, etc., so the API and implementation have to be done in a 
certain way, but there are already a bunch of dependencies.

Here's the right way to look at it: should there be some apps that 
randomly have help buttons because they are "gnome apps" and some that 
don't because they are "gtk apps"; do app developers want this? do users 
want this? Does it even make any sense?

I think obviously no, it's just crazy. _Nobody_ wants this.

But, would it make sense that ALL apps have a help button IF there is 
help available and installed? I would say yes.

So take as a baseline this desired app developer and user experience, 
then figure out how to implement it. Could you put the help files in gtk 
itself and also use them on Windows? It's one possibility. Could you 
have help hooks as proposed in the bug? It's another possibility. Could 
you just know the filename the gnome docs use, stat it, and display the 
help button if it's there? Could do that.

Havoc