Re: Multihead support for GTK

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

"Sergio A. Kessler" <sak tribctas gba gov ar> writes:

> there will be no changes in the file-selector arena ?
> (because it seems that averybody and their pets have implemented
> new file-selector dialogs)

I think its clear that the file selection needs major improvements,
and a lot of people are working on that. But because there are several
projects underway, and because the changes needed are big, it doesn't
seem very feasible to get major changes into GTK+-2.0. 

Not only do we need to decide on one particular visual design, 
we need to make sure that the API and the code conform to
GTK+ standards and test it thoroughly; this is quite a bit of 
work.

In fact, in terms of the API, we probably will want to leave the
old file selector around (GtkFileSelection, while creating new
widgets, say, GtkFileChooser, GtkFileChooserDialog.)

The reason for this is while the official GtkFileSelection 
interface is fairly small and clean, people access the internals
of GtkFileSelection extensively, and any changes to even
such trivial things as how GtkFileSelection is laid out will
break these programs.

(look, for example, at the file selection in the GIMP)

I don't think it will be a problem to add a new file selector
after 2.0 without breaking compatibilty, and we should
get it right rather than rushing it.

Regards,
                                        Owen

[ No decision on this matter has been made by the GTK+ team
  yet, I'm just giving my personal view of the situation. ]