[Glade-devel] Glade Menu Editor for Glade3

[pborelli katamail com (Paolo Borelli)]

On Sun, 2003-08-24 at 21:22, Archit Baweja wrote:
> Hi
>
> I was thinking of getting the Menu Editor code which was copied verbatim
> (more or less from glade-2) working in glade-3. However since its quite a big
> overhaul, I think it would be better to branch the glade3 tree and work on it.
> Once done people can review it and we can merge it back into the main tree with
> rest of code after fixing some minor conflicts.
>
> Before going forward I have 2 questions...
>
> 1) Should I actually branch it, or is the change not major enough to warrant
> branching, in which case I could just continue patching HEAD branch.

First of all let me say that I greatly appreciate the fact that you
decided to work on the menu editor!

With regard to branching, IMHO you can go on working on HEAD as long as
the tree remains compilable: the current menu editor is not working
anyway. Of course Joaquin has the last word about it.


> 2) If I do branch, I was thinking I should brach at some point where glade-3
> is reasonably stable so that there is less time spent in fixing some other bugs
> and more in actually getting Menu Editing to work. For that
>     a) Paolo is your "removing GladeWidget->children" patches done? Could you
>        test the code and fix some minor bugs introduced (if any).

The removal of GladeWidget->children has been done and committed. I
can't see any bugs or regression introduced by this change; if you have
noticed some let me know.

>     b) Joaquin are you done fixing the catalog code?

Looking at the code, I think there is still some stuff to be done here,
but I'll let Joaquin respond.

> If you two are done fixing you last major patches, I could consider glade-3
> reasonably stable to branch (again, if indeed its needed).

I'm not very familiar with branches, but I think that if you decide to
branch to work on the menu editor you can do it whenever you want: since
it's a self contained piece of code, it should not be affected by other
changes.


While I'm at it let me write some random thoughts/questions/ideas about
the menu editor:

* It seems to me that in gtk-2.4 the menu widget has been completely
overhowled, with the integration of the menu stuff that was in egg. Does
this affect the menu editor? (I think that when gtk2.4 comes out we
should start supporting its new widgets, and probably at some point
switch completely to 2.4 as a requirement)

* A boring, but badly needed change is switching the current menu editor
from gtkclist to gtktreeview: AFAIK is the only thing (modulo minor
stuff) preventing us to compile with -DGTK_DISABLE_DPERECATED

* A review/simplification of the ui of the menu editor is probably
needed: maybe we should try to get some inputs (even better mockups)
from users and ui experts.

* Sometimes ago there was some discussion about changing the way
accelerators for the menu entries work; in particular may be worth
trying to get rid of the key selection dialog and investigate if the
accelerator stuff in libegg fits our needs (you can see it working in
GnomeTerminal keyboard shortcuts editor)

* We must remember that the menu editor is also used for the optionmenu
widget and not only for the menubar. This is probably related to find a
way to specify the "Edit menu" button in the xml file of the widget
class instead of the hack we have now. (Note that this is not strictly
related to the menu editor code itself and may interact/conflict with
Joaquin changes to the catalogs)


ciao
        paolo