RE: [gnomemm] gnomevfsmm TODO and questions

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

> From: Bryan Forbes [mailto:mxpxfifws yahoo com] 
> Hey all, I just made a big commit on gnomevfsmm which wraps 
> almost all of the MIME
> functions.  Murray has requested to see the TODO file for 
> gnomevfsmm, so I figured other
> people may want to see it.  Well, here it is in all its glory:
> 
> 0. Documentation, documentation, documentation:
>     a) I hate sparsely documented libs/programs/etc. so this 
> will not be a problem
>        with my stuff.  Please, if you have doc suggestions, 
> file a bug!  If our
>        wording improves on the gnome-vfs docs, file a bug 
> with the gnome-vfs project
>        as well.  If you don't document, you will get an email 
> asking for it :).
>     b) If you don't understand wrapping, or simply just want 
> to do documents, please
> check
>        out docs/undocumented to see what you can document.  Thank you!
> 
> 1. Finish Mime stuff:
>     a) finish MimeAction
>       i) how do we go about getting the component info from 
> this class? (Bowie??)
>       ii) all functions dealing with the action need to be wrapped.
>     b) finish MimeMonitor
>       i) what is this used for and how is it used?
>       ii) wrap the functions that use this (if there are any).
>     c) convenience methods??
>       i) a lot of functions in 
> Gnome::Vfs::ApplicationRegistry and Gnome::Vfs::Mime 
>          could also be/should be methods of MimeApplication; 
> do we want to make
> convenience
>          methods and make life easier on developers??
>       ii) if these are going to be true "object oriented" 
> bindings, I think we should
>           make most of these ApplicationRegistry and Mime 
> functions that act on
> MimeApplication
>           members into methods; that way they are actually 
> actions/tests of the objects
> they
>           work on.
>     d) Examples!!
>       i) write examples that uses most of the commonly used methods.
>       ii) comment examples EXTENSIVELY... don't just tell 
> what you are doing
>           in the examples; tell WHY you are doing it.  This 
> helps newbies out.

I have added some comments to the TODO in cvs.

> 2. Start Xfer class/namespace.
> 
> 3. Start Async class/namespace.

I will try to look at these Xfer and Async things. It would help if you
pointed me to particular functions in the gnome-vfs headers. cvs web URLs
are always helpful.

I reviewed some of the new code and added the mime_type_list example.

> As you can see, I have a lot of expectations for this module. 
>  Before I go any further, I
> would like to discuss what to do about some functions in the 
> Mime and ApplicationRegistry
> namespaces.  It seems to me that a lot of these functions 
> work with an "application id"
> which is obtained from either MimeApplication or a couple of 
> functions in the
> ApplicationRegistry namespace.  My question is, should we 
> make what I would call
> "convenience methods" for MimeApplication that use the 
> registry and mime functions from
> gnome-vfs?

I think the whole MIME system is very unclear. Let's get some more example
code written so we can figure out what these functions are supposed to do.
There seems to be some duplication - if so then we can remove that and maybe
that will make a unification clearer.

If you are talking about hiding the "application_id" then that sounds nice,
because I have no idea what it really is.

For all gnome-vfs stuff that we don't understand, we should try to find
examples of it's use in GNOME.

>  To me, this makes sense, but I want other 
> people's opinions.  Please look at
> the current cvs to see if this would be more intuitive.  
> Also, Murray, could you update
> the docs on the webpage so my doc changes are up.

I'll try to do that soon.

>  Thanks.  
> Also, thanks in advance for
> any response I get to this email.  Any help is appreciated!

Murray Cumming
murrayc usa net
www.murrayc.com