Re: A batch of newbie questions.

[Roland Smith <rsmith xs4all nl>]

On Thu, 02 Jan 2003 22:06:27 +0000
<tint14 hotmail com> wrote:

> I have an idea for a graphical app I'd like to write. It's a frontend for 
> another piece of free software called vcdimager, which currently lacks an 
> OSS FE that fully exposes all of its capabilities. Several other apps, good 
> and bad, have given me a ideas for the UI and I have a few napkin sketches. 
> They're in the process of being refined, but before I jump into writing code 
> I have a few technical and non-technical questions that I'd like to pose to 
> experienced developers.

> ---------------------------------
> Here are the questions:
>
> I really like glade from what I've seen so far, but does it generate gtk+ 
> 2.0/2.2 code?

Version 1.1.3 does. See http://glade.gnome.org/download.html

> I tried out the Anjuta IDE and at first glance it seems adequate for my 
> purposes. It has presets for gtk+ projects so that's a plus. However, when I 
> start a new project, it generates makefiles, configure scripts, and other 
> things that I'm not yet familiar enough with GNU auto* to identify. Glade 
> does this as well. Does that mean they won't play nicely together (e.g. 
> overwrite each other's files)?

Don't know Anjuta, so I can't help you there. Personally, I tink that auto* is
kind of overkill on Linux.

> Anjuta has presets for gtk+ projects. It also has presets for gnome 2.0 
> projects and "libglade 2.0" projects. What is the difference between a gtk+ 
> project, a gnome 2.0 project, and a "libglade 2.0" project? Are they 
> mutually exclusive?

Gnome is GTK+ _and_ the gnome libraries. Libglade is a library for creating
the UI for your program at runtime from an XML file generated by glade. See
http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/

> Just from playing around with glade, it seems that writing a "gnome" app 
> means writing a gtk+ app that uses any number of gnome-specific components. 
> Is this correct?

Yes.

> Do any of my software choices (Anjuta, glade, GNU auto*) or library 
> dependencies (gtk+ 2.0, gnome2 [?], libglade [?]) limit my ability to write 
> a portable/localizable program?

They should work on must Unix-like systems, There are also ports to Windows for
Emacs and the GTK+ stuff. Don't know about autotools or Anjuta, though.

> I've downloaded and read the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines. Is there 
> anything else along that line that I should read before getting started? Is 
> there anything else I should read in general?

UI design and usability is something most coders (myself included) aren't
familiar with, I think. Build your app so that it looks logical to you, and see
what your users are saying.

> Any other suggestions or comments?

Use gettext(3) for i18n.
 
HTH, Roland
-- 
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