libgnomeui projects (was: spell checking)

[robert havoc pennington <rhpennin midway uchicago edu>]

On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Eric M. Ludlam wrote:
> 
> You can already make menu items show help in a status line by
> attaching a simple callback to the enter_notify_event for each button.
> I leave the last message up for good measure.  

Yep, I'd just like to see this happen automatically when you create the
GnomeApp. I may code it eventually, I was just mentioning it hoping
someone else would do it first. :)

> If the GnomeApp had
> this status line, then it would become more like the Motif
> XmMainWindow, and many other apps.  I made the status line in gnu talk
> an entry widget so that it could double and a place to ask simple
> questions (It also supports a curses mode in the same executable).
> 

I like this, but dialogs are better for newbies or for mouse-only
operation. So it has to be abstracted, something like 

gnome_app_warning(GnomeApp * app, const gchar * message);
gnome_app_yes_no_question(GnomeApp * app, const gchar * question);
/* e.g., "Loading config...", status bar only. */
gnome_app_status(GnomeApp * app, const gchar * status); 
etc.

which would use the status line or a MessageBox depending on some global
config option and whether the app has a statusbar. Should be trivial to
do, if anyone gets inspired... 

I've been going through apps changing dialogs, by the way, and these
functions seem to get written in every single app - a good hint that they
should be in the library. Mozilla has them too.

Slightly harder but still easy would be a progress indicator with cancel
functionality (hmm, maybe we need a GnomeProgress dialog...) 

Oh, while I'm rattling on, if anyone's bored the gnome-app-helper menu
generation could also be improved to enforce policy on menu contents. 
e.g. the Help menu should right-justify automatically, there should be
stock menuitems for "About..." etc. with the right number of trailing dots
and translations, Preferences... should consistently be on either File or
Edit, etc.  Most of this could be gotten right automatically by the
library. 

The policy being enforced probably has to be written, too. :) Something
which describes the File, Edit, Window, Help menus in detail: what's on
them in what order. 

Last night I came up with some TODO items for libgnomeui, I'll check
those in along with some of these ideas.

Havoc Pennington
http://pobox.com/~hp