Re: GnomeAbout's themeability

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Jason Leach <leach@wam.umd.edu> writes: 
> 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().
> 

One consideration you may be missing is gtk_ctree_set_expander_style()
syndrome. That is, things configurable about widgets that developers
really have no earthly reason to change. This stuff is Evil (tm) and
is a big failing in Tcl/Tk (for example).

In this case I think you're right that the property box isn't
appropriate with >5-6 tabs, but something like the ctree expanders
should never be changed. 

Similarly I question whether diversity in About boxes is a good
thing. Diversity in API should all reflect semantic decisions or
different UI situations, it should never just reflect random
"developer of Foo likes Blah L&F better."

But, the URL parameter is already added to CVS about box IIRC.

Havoc