Re: Proposed module: glade3

[Tristan Van Berkom <tvb gnome org>]

On Mon, 2007-01-08 at 19:05 +0000, Ross Burton wrote:
> I'm torn over glade3.  Last time I tried it (a month ago or so) I had to
> go back to glade2 due to some reason (missing features IIRC, but I can't
> recall).

    Could we please restrict this thread to concrete points about
existing bugs or particular missing features ? (I dont mean to 
bite by saying that - I just think it would be more productive
if we stuck to the facts).

Glade 3 will inevitably remain different from Glade 2, I believe that
thus far, we've managed to cover the basic feature set of the original
Glade tool and more - although some corner features have been left out
(mostly context menu shortcuts like "add row to GtkTable", 
"Add alignment" etc.).

As for the context menu stuff which I consider low priority as it
falls into the "bells and whistles" category; we have a framework 
in place that allows the plugin to add scripted actions of that 
nature to context menus on a per widget-class basis (these can be
added by the plugin, or even by the user) - at any rate, I expect
those context menu items to be available in a final 3.2 release.

I dont think that those corner features should hold us back from
phasing out Glade 2 though.

> There is also Gazpacho which has an very interesting interface
> and supports GtkAction and other rad features (though until GTK+ has
> GtkBuilder this isn't useful for C coders).

    I have to note here that this was a political/practicle decision
for Glade - GtkAction (or any other GObject) is not supported by
libglade, and we didnt want to be "yet another GUI designer with its
own custom parser" when we figured everyone should be using libglade
or the future builder (we also chose to value compatability with
existing glade files - pretty much above all things).

I should also note that since I started hacking on the project over 
2 years ago, my first objective was to support non-widget GObjects
in glade - I've been using a custom toolkit that makes extensive
use of GObject delagates - all of which are serialized in glade
files using Glade & libglade + our patch[1] that provides GObject
support to libglade (we at touchtunes have been using this
infrastructure for over a year now in production code).

Anyway, you can rest assured that adding objects to the gtk+ catalog,
be it GtkWidget derivatives or others - is not a very big deal.

> I'd prefer to wait another cycle, wait for GtkBuilder, and then let
> glade2, glade3, and gazpacho have a fight out on a level playing field.

Since Glade 2 is not actively developed in recent years and there is no
plans for future development on it, I think its safe to rule out Glade 2

John Stowers wrote:
> I hope glade3 and anjuta are considered a package deal. Im pretty sure
> anjuta uses (lib)glade3 for its embedded glade editing so shipping the
> two together makes sense.

Nod, Glade also integrates with DevHelp, api-reference shortcuts from
the Glade UI will trigger a search on an external DevHelp, or if
you are running the Glade plugin to Anjuta, the DevHelp plugin instance
of Anjuta will be used for the search - this was not an overwhelming
amount of work, but I think we can be proud of the level of integration
we currently have across these 3 tools.

Happy new year hackers ! :D

Cheers,
                     -Tristan

[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161903