RE: a Wizard/Druid/Assistant widget for gtk

[martyn 2 russell bt com]

> > Just to confirm, are we happy with "next" and "back" as 
> terminology?  To
> > me, forward/back and next/previous are logical language 
> pairings.  It
> > would be good to get confirmation from the UI team before 
> writing this
> > in an API.
> 
> Yes, I also thought about this inconsistency, but didn't come up with
> something sufficently better (the Java LAF examples also use 
> Back/Next,
> the Aqua HIG example uses Go Back/Continue).

Would it not be logical to use the STOCK icons (forward and back)?  The
first thing people usually focus on is the image on the button, and I think
that it should really be consistant with the rest of GTK.

> > Other thoughts:
> > 
> >  * Do we have a proposed look for the Assistant?  I think 
> we need that
> >    before we write the look API.  There's a danger here of ending up
> >    with the current problem with GtkMessageDialog API with 
> no way to do
> >    Primary/Secondary text nicely.  Additionally, I am 
> pretty sure that
> >    people found the GnomeDruidPageStandard API limiting, 
> though I can't
> >    remember the specifics.  Perhaps they just found it ugly, as they
> >    kept modifying the canvas directly. (-;
> 
> My current code was directly lifted from Anders' EggDruid. It 
> provides a
> sidebar where an image can be displayed and a header which contains a
> title, a description and a smaller logo. I've attached a demo 
> (sorry for
> the silly images).

I know it is a little early to get into the look at this stage, but there
are couple of things I have noticed which could be improved.  I am comparing
this to the Inno Setup (a small image is available here:
http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php).  

* They have two types of pages, one (as seen on the link above) has an image
on the left and the welcome message on the right (this is also used in the
closing page(s)).  The other type (of which I could not find a shot for) is
simply a title for that page, plus a short description and the small icon
and then a mid section for the controls.

* The assistant container at the bottom (with Cancel, Finish, etc buttons)
is always shown from the left side to the right side where as the image you
posted shows the EggDruid to have the left strip (in red) all the way to the
bottom of the Dialog.

The Inno wizard makes use of the Top and the Left but not at the same time
(which is what the EggDruid seems to do). - This is just a consideration.

> > 
> >  * How will control-flow work?  How would you handle 
> hitting next and
> >    preventing it from automagically going to the next page? 
>  Would you
> >    have to call set_page() to the current page?  Will that retrigger
> >    "prepare"?  Do you stop the signal emission.  For 
> example, consider
> >    an app with a slow operation.  You might want to popup a dialog
> >    "Searching for new hardware [ Cancel ]" and not actually 
> switch pages
> >    until that task is finished.  When they hit next, you 
> basically want
> >    the Assistant to do nothing.
> 
> You can just return TRUE, no need to set_page() to the current page;
> set_page() to the current page won't retrigger ::prepare. 
> 

Something which I would want to be able to do is to jump pages.  For
example, if there is an initial page with two Toggle buttons, and the wizard
takes two different paths based on that choice, how would that be done?

Additional thoughts:

I have also seen wizards/assistants have a progress bar.  The programmer can
by all means have their own page do this, but should an embedded progress
bar be considered?  

Regards,
Martyn