Re: Commit: some bonobo work

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

Hi Dom,

	Thanks for your comments, some of which are easy to answer, and others
are more interesting :-)

On Tue, 2003-02-25 at 16:31, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
> Gnomeprint 2.2 is an exceptionally stable library and
> if it isn't considered a "platform library", well,
> IMNSHO, it should be. The only mention of bonobo in
> the GP sources is:
> 
> "* gnome-print-bonobo.[ch],
> gnome-print-bonobo-client.[ch]: remove as they are not
> used (yet)"

	Right - so you have to find someone who will take the code; it's not
libbonoboui; perhaps it is 'gal' or gnome-office-libs or some other such
place, I've no idea.

> For applications like Abi and Gnumeric, being able to
> print is essential.

	Clearly; the thing is - the amount of code is in fact so small, that
this thing is easily cut & pastable - at least, from what I remember of
writing it.

> Sure, I'll write up better content negotiation Persist
> and PersistFile interfaces and send them to you.

	We should do it as an extension, so we're bin-compatible (and/or a
separate aggregated interface) - it'd be great to have though - for
sure. I believe we had a list of supported mime types in getContentTypes
- but AFAIK only evolution ever really used that (for the gtkhtml editor
component).

> > 	I think the thing to do is to sit down with Jody and/or anyone
> > embedding your app, and come to some decent agreement on what interfaces
> > you really need - I'd be happy to have some well thought out new things
> > going into bonobo.
> 
> I don't disagree, and we've already planned to do that.

	Great :-) it's nice to have your input.

> Should be able to pass in a GObject to a convenience
> constructor and have it automagically construct a
> PropertyBag for it. After all, how different to an
> application developer are the get/set fns from the
> GObject ones, and how different are BonoboArgs from
> GValues. It should just be like magic.

	Well - we have most of just such a magic-like method; you currently
have to do:

	pb = bonobo_property_bag_new (NULL, NULL);
	pspecs = g_object_class_list_properties (
		G_OBJECT_GET_CLASS (my_object), &n_pspecs);
	bonobo_property_bag_map_params (
		pb, my_object, pspecs, n_pspecs);

	So it should be trivial to hack up a convenience method to do all of
that in 1 shot; call it 'bonobo_property_bag_new_for_gobject' and feel
free to commit to HEAD libbonobo; [I've just branched it for you].

> Should have a working, implemented print interface
> situated within Bonobo proper or GnomePrint.

	In which case GnomePrint - but as I say; this decision is entirely
political; you may have more luck getting it into libgnomeprintui -
Chema ?

> Persist and PersistFile should have a content
> negotiation method that more closely resembles the X
> clipboard mechanism. This might be a nitpick, but I,
> as an application developer, don't see the reason to
> have your own ContentType (even if it is just an
> integer) when mime-types, lists, and strings are so
> readily available.

	Uh ? ContentType is a typedef for a string, which contains a mime-type,
so ... I'm not quite clear what's up there.

> Ideally for me as an application programmer, as few
> CORBA_foo-like things would pass into my consciousness
> as possible, especially when they so closely resemble
> other glib datatypes such as gdouble, gint, gfloat,
> GError, etc... I think that more could (and perhaps
> should) be done behind the scenes.

	Well - the CORBA_foo types are in the spec; and better - they cause no
real pain, you can automatically cast between gdouble and CORBA_double -
they're all just typedefs of 'double' anyway ;-) [ CORBA_boolean as a
guchar equivalent vs. gboolean == int is one gotcha for var-args, but
... can't do much about that now ].

> The kicker: Bonobo 2.0 API documentation should be
> hosted on http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/

	That sucks - Gustavo did a load of work making the docs really good,
adding diagrams, more text, you name it - they should rock; it's a shame
they're not on that page. We should make noise at whomever maintains it.
Gustavo any chance of posting a link to your copy as well?

>  Your hard work and effort are appreciated, even if my original mail
> didn't come off that way (granted that email wasn't meant for you at
> all, either). All I'm saying is that my life as a consumer of the
> Bonobo library could be easier and more fulfilling, and my previous
> email was just me griping.

	Heh :-) that's fine - it's great that you're using bonobo to the extent
that you notice these things, and are prepared to do something about
you.

	Good to have you around,

	Regards,

		Michael.

-- 
 mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot