Re: Future developement, GtkUIManager XML Question?

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Lars Clausen wrote:

> Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 01:26:58 +0100 (CET)
> From: Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk>
> Reply-To: discussions about usage and development of dia
>     <dia-list gnome org>
> To: discussions about usage and development of dia <dia-list gnome org>
> Subject: Re: Future developement, GtkUIManager XML Question?
>
> Alan Horkan sagde:
> > The below extract from Bugzilla suggests the possibility of moving to
> > GTKUImanager.
> > The API describes GtkUIManager as "Constructing menus and toolbars from an
> > XML description".
> >
> > I'm just wondering if we were to move to an XML system for the user
> > interface why not go the next step and use Glade like Gnumeric and Abiword
> > do?
> >
> > Presumably there are downsides I'm not seeing but it isn't obvious
> > to me so please do let me know.
>
> Does the phrase "total rework of the entire user interface" sound
> appealing?

I was thinking of something more gradual than that statement implies.

> I think not, not when we're aiming to stabilize for 1.0 eventually.

Perhaps after 1.0

> GtkUIManager seems like it is a straightforward change of an already
> fairly systematic part of Dia.  And even that I have at fairly low
> priority,

this makes sense, no problem.

> bug fixes and my short list of features way higher.

> Changing a half-dozen hand-crafted and carefully debugged UI designs
> into autogenerated stuff is no easy task.  We've had one part already
> generated by Glade, and it wasn't bugfree, far from it.

Depending on when 1.0 was due I was hoping to take a crack at replacing
all the PushButtons with CheckBoxes before then and I think there are a
lot more user interface changes that could bring Dia more in line with the
Gnome Human Interface Guidelines.  That doesn't need Glade but I thought
it might make some aspects of it easier to manage.

I'd like to believe Glade is a lot better now than it was and that the
horror stories are a thing of the past.  The hope would be that Glade
would reduce the requirement for hand crafting and and make it easier a
wider group of people to help.

Clearly there is a lot of hostility to Glade.
I'll not mention it again (at least not until after 1.0 or I'm in a
better position to do most of the work required).

- Alan H.