Re: [gnome-db] Re: new release

[Vivien Malerba <malerba gnome-db org>]

On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 12:59:23PM +0100, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> > BTW, I'm working on a creation of low level classes to unify common
> > behaviours of some objects of Mergeant (for instance the DbField and
> > QueryField objects or the DbTable and Query objects). I think it is
> > necessary for at least two reasons:
> > - it's difficult, even for me, for find easily my way in the code so the
> >   learning curve is quite high and I want to change this.
> > - I want to make a library for all the basic objects which can be used
> >   by other programs if necessary.
> > 
> this is a good idea, and in fact, something that would allow us to do
> nice things, such as:
> 
> * I recently added a mime type for .mergeant files, so that if you click
> on them, mergeant is executed with the file name as argument. We could,
> if we have mergeant's basic engine in a lib, create a nautilus view for
> mergeant files.
> 
> * have gnome-office applications access mergeant's engine, which could
> be much more powerful than just using libgda/libgnomedb (what they do
> right now, mainly only libgda).

That's the point, yes. I would also like to be able to use mergeant as a
lib from other programs (C or whatever if we can make bonobo interfaces
with it).

> 
> BTW, about opening files in Mergeant, I've got a concern, which is I
> don't like the label and icon that is shown when no connection is
> opened. I think it gives the app a bad look. So, I was thinking if it
> could start with a connection dialog, or even better, with a dialog that
> lets the user choose between opening a .mergeant file or opening
> directly a connection to a DB server.
> 

This is a good idea, and is simple to implement.

> Also, when opening a file, we could make mergeant work offline until the
> user explicitly connects to the database server. Would that be hard to
> do?
> 

That would be good! Unfortunately it is something quite hard to do right
now because a lot of widgets depend on the "connection opened" or
"connection closed" signals. I think it will be easier when I have
finished my work on the classes reorganisation. I'll keep this in mind.

Cheers,

Vivien