[Evolution-hackers] shell & component changes required for 60354

[Not Zed <notzed ximian com>]

It seems many of the shell interfaces were oversimplified for 1.5 or were oversimplified to start with ...

There's no way for anything to talk to any other bit of it.  You can't even talk to the shell from the component at all.

Anyway as part of this bug (incl patch):

http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=60354

I've added a bunch of new things, but so far only on a branch (notzed-shell-title).  Some of it is a bit hacky and i'm not 100% sure on all the reffing and whatnot.

The shell now creates ShellView objects rather than just internal structures, when you create a new window.
Components create ComponentView objects rather than just returning controls nobody can track or interact with later.

Components now have a path to talk to the specific window in which they reside.

The 'new item' thing could possibly also pass the current componentview or shellview so it retains proper context, or run itself off a view.

Potentially in the future, you could have for example, a MailView ComponentView which subclasses ComponentView and provides additional mail-specific interfaces like 'go to folder' 'show message' etc.

Potentially you could add a list of windows the shell is managing and components the windows (views) are managing, so you could control evo remotely.  Etc.

Anyway since it affects all the components, comments?

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Michael Zucchi <notzed ximian com> Novell's Evolution and Free Software Developer