Re: GnomeAbout's themeability

[Jason Leach <leach wam umd edu>]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2000 at 09:41:46PM +0000, Tom Gilbert wrote:
> * Jason Leach (leach@wam.umd.edu) wrote:
> > Hi everyone, I'm new to this list.
> > 
> > I do agree, super-ultra-complex about boxes: not good.
> > 
> > However, I threw up this recommendation into the IRC channel a while
> > back though (should have filed a bugs.gnome.org wishlist item or
> > something), it seemed to be received then though: What about adding an
> > gnome-href into the about, so developers could add links to their
> > homepage with the ease of just another gnome_about_new parameter? (And
> > users the ease of getting to a programs homepage with just a click)
> 
> Does it need a change to gnome_about?
> 
>   my_url = gnome_href_new ("http://www.tomgilbert.freeserve.co.uk",
>                            "Visit the author's Website");
>   gtk_widget_show (my_url);
>   gtk_box_pack_start (GTK_BOX ((GNOME_DIALOG (about))->vbox), my_url, FALSE,
>                       FALSE, 0);
> 
> That's all you have to add to your about box code to do it. See the
> screenshooter applet in 1.1.4 for an example.
> 
> At least as it is you could go ahead and add another, or something
> else... The vbox provides you an area to play with, so I don't see the
> need for changing gnome_about for that....

It is possible, as just about anything is with GTK/GNOME, like how I
completely changed the properties dialog for Pan from a notebook
design/layout to a paned left-sided clist, like control-center, in
about 20-25 total lines of change.

The point here is that GNOME, so I had believed, is about making an
API to make developers life easier/better.  I can see other
programmers wanting to have a properties dialog that's left-sided
clist instead of notebook (for >5-6 tabs, it makes for better UI
design), but I don't think it's the best solution to have each of them
go look up some other program and duplicate the 20-25 lines change.  I
have proposed changes for gnome-propertybox.[ch] (that I'll go into
detail in another mail) that would make the ability to have either of
these styles as transparent/simple as just changing one parameter to
gnome_propertybox_new().

So, you give a good example that it can be done in roughly 5-6 lines,
however, can't you see that having a homepage link in the about dialog
would be pretty desirable to other programmers?

Is it really the best solution to make these dozens of developers add
5 or 6 lines in (needing to do a quick check on gnome-href API docs,
the data structure of GnomeAbout, and create/manage a temporary
GnomeHref variable) when it could be arranged to make it an extra
parameter to an existing API call or a new API function (with
simple[r] parameters like gchar *description, gchar *address)?

Just throwing out some ideas, this is way to much babbling from my end
for something dumb like GnomeAbout though :), Sorry,

Jason Leach
leach@wam.umd.edu