RE: Ease of use (was Call for constructive user criticism.)

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

Yes I can confirm that libglade builds the interface at runtime from an
external file (this is how it differs from glade's code generation
aproach).

It is possible to edit the interfaces with glade, which is probably what
you are after.

Multiple UIs are possible by loading different XML files (the choice is
up to the application).

Generally you can modify a GUI quite substantially as long as you don't
modify the names of certain key widgets (most libglade programs will
create the interface, then get pointers to a number of the widgets by
their name).

The runtime penalty is generally pretty small.  There is the overhead of
parsing the XML file, but this is only done once (the output of the XML
parser is cached so that you can create a new copy of the interface).  For
the next version, I have done a bit of work on the XML parser (switched
over to the SAX api), which should decrease some of the memory amd 
speed overhead.  The actual building of the interface should take a
similar amount of time to a hand coded interface (maybe a bit more, but it
is not noticeable).  When the interface is constructed, libglade gets out
of the way, and does not add any more overhead.

I hope this helps answer some of your questions about libglade.

James.

--
Email: james@daa.com.au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/


On Fri, 6 Aug 1999, Steve Homer wrote:

> I've a couple of questions regarding libglade (it sounds too good to be
> true!)
> 
> Firstly can you confirm that the user interface is built at runtime from an
> xml file containing the UI definition.
> 
> 1) Can the user modify the user interface in a simple manner from a
> graphical utility.
> 
> 2) Could multiple UI's be supported selected via meta-data or a preference
> or ....
> 
> 3) How much flexibility is given in the modification of the UI.
> 
> 4) How does Libglade deal with custom widgets as part of the UI.
> 
> 5) What runtime penalty is incurred from a dynamic UI.
> 
> If dynamic UI is possible we should definitely push it as a core feature of
> Gnome. Themeablity to point of the widget placement!!!!
> 
> Cheers,
> Steve
>