[Glade-devel] Future of the preview feature

[marcodiegomesquita at gmail.com (Marco Diego Aurélio Mesquita)]

Hi devs!

I just talked with tristan on IRC about this subject. This is what happened:

(16:45:39) Marco: tristan: hi!
(16:45:51) tristan: hey Marco
(16:46:00) tristan: damn its late
(16:46:05) Marco: :/
(16:46:10) tristan: heh
(16:46:12) Marco: can we talk about the preview feature?
(16:46:23) tristan: tried to stay up for gtk+ meeting
(16:46:29) tristan: we'll see if I last
(16:46:52) tristan: about preview feature, well I guess... for a bit
(16:47:33) Marco: well, do you really think having snapshot previews
alongside dynamic previews would cause feature creep?
(16:48:06) tristan: I think so
(16:48:13) Marco: hmmm
(16:48:13) tristan: however that's not what I said on the list ;-)
(16:48:17) tristan: but now that you ask
(16:48:22) tristan: yes I kindof think so
(16:48:57) Marco: what about my idea of having the toolbar button for
dynamic previews and the popup menu for snapshots?
(16:49:28) tristan: eh
(16:49:48) Marco: ?
(16:50:06) tristan: I'm not so hot on the idea of having the toolbar
do something different from the menu
(16:50:18) tristan: actually I'm leaning towards unifying it more
(16:50:33) tristan: i.e. the menu should take the input GladeWidget
and crawl up the hierarchy
(16:50:37) tristan: only show the toplevel
(16:50:50) tristan: another thing that needs fixing actually I noticed
(16:50:50) Marco: hmmm...
(16:50:55) Marco: seems reasonable
(16:50:57) tristan: projects dont all have GtkWindows
(16:51:23) tristan: so.. when using the toolbar preview, I think I saw
some test for GTK_IS_WINDOW
(16:51:39) tristan: i.e. if there's no selected widget
(16:51:55) tristan: it should also just use the first topmost GladeWidget
(16:52:38) tristan: dynamic previews are going to be tough to do
(16:52:40) Marco: hum... yes, there is such test
(16:52:54) tristan: for toplevels, we dont want to recreate the
toplevel every time
(16:53:08) Marco: but doesn't seems too difficult to fix
(16:53:20) tristan: right, for that test.. that code should consider
that a project can be comprised of toplevel GladeWidgets that are not
GtkWindow
(16:53:30) Marco: ok
(16:53:41) tristan: in the hopeful near future, a project will be
comprised of a handful of Glade files
(16:53:58) Marco: so, what about the protocol to update the ui?
(16:54:00) tristan: i.e., one Glade file to define the UI of every
composite widget in the project
(16:54:31) tristan: another thing would be nice... when a preview is
displaying a toplevel... and the toplevel has a window title
(16:54:51) tristan: the window title should be changed for "Preview:
Original Window Title"
(16:54:56) tristan: that would help
(16:55:01) Marco: ok
(16:55:15) Marco: and, what about the protocol?
(16:55:19) tristan: about the protocol to update the UI, I suppose
ideally when window content changes and its a window
(16:55:30) tristan: then we need to not recreate the toplevel
(16:55:37) tristan: just sync its properties
(16:55:44) tristan: and recreate the contents completely
(16:55:53) tristan: better than trying some fancy merge
(16:56:01) Marco: hmmm
(16:56:21) Marco: the toplevel reamains, the rest is rebuilt with new
properties?
(16:57:26) tristan: the whole UI is rebuilt, the present toplevel has
its contents removed and consequently destroyed, the new UI has its
child reparented into the old UI, the original windows properties get
synced to the properties for the new window
(16:57:59) tristan: end of story (much easier and more reliable than
fine grain fixing)
(16:58:44) tristan: Marco, for all of this, it would be best to start with:
(16:59:04) tristan:   - Adding GladePreview (represents a preview of a
toplevel project object)
(16:59:24) tristan: (and implements the protocol and its an api to be
used by GladeProject internally)
(16:59:50) tristan:   - Start by bookkeeping the running previews by
toplevel GladeWidget
(17:00:11) tristan: i.e. that part is sending the "raise" command to
the preview if a current preview is already running for that toplevel
(17:00:30) tristan: making sure there is only one preview for each
toplevel at a time
(17:00:51) tristan: and handling the case where a toplevel gets a new
parent cleanly
(17:01:22) Marco: ok
(17:01:48) Marco: can send an e-mail explaining it to the devel list?
(or else I'll forget it)
(17:02:20) tristan: Feel free to send one and paste the text from irc
(17:02:35) Marco: ok
(17:02:56) Marco: so, AFAICS, my idea of snapshots will be gone?
(17:03:02) tristan: Marco, getting Glade to compile and work with the
offscreen branch is really my Glade priority right now
(17:03:16) tristan: so dont be offended if I'm latent with previews
(17:03:19) tristan: I'll get to it
(17:03:26) Marco: ok
(17:03:34) Marco: I'm not in a hurry
(17:03:38) tristan: snapshots will dissapear in favour of the new
dynamic preview I think
(17:04:06) tristan: unless people on the list complain, which I doubt
(17:04:27) Marco: now that the patch is in I won't feel bad to spend
some time to design future improvements
(17:04:33) tristan: I think its really best to keep to the context of
a UI designer tool, and be simplest and best usable
(17:04:54) Marco: ok
(17:05:22) Marco: I'll copy-paste it to the list as a reminder. Any objection?
(17:06:11) tristan: sure, reply to the current thread that we had an
irc conversation... that way people will also feel free to comment on
this stuff