Re: Sheets and Drawers - status

[Maciej Katafiasz <mnews22 wp pl>]

Dnia 09-08-2004, pon o godzinie 12:41 -0700, Ken Harris napisał(a):
> Howdy,
> 
> Here's an update on my Gtk+ Drawers and Sheets mock-up:
> (http://bitpoetry.com/programs/gtksheetsanddrawers/)
> 
> The responses I've seen seem to be, generally:
> 1 - people want these widgets
> 2 - there's some concern about usability, especially re drawers
> 3 - it might be best in the window manager, rather than in Gtk+
> 
> 1. People want these.  Cool.
> 
> 2. Usability: People are telling me about how products like Quicktime 4,
> Nextstep, and MS Office have done drawers (or drawer-like
> functionality).  I haven't used these products in years, if at all, so I
> don't know what your specific concerns are.  The image I have in my head
> is what Mac OS X uses for Camino's sidebar and Goban's move list.  I
> don't think drawers/widgets fundamentally are bad design (but, of
> course, it's always possible to implement any concept poorly).

It was more a question -- "how MacOS X does them so they don't suck in
corner cases?", rather than suggestion of inherent suckability ;)

> 3. Implementation: I fully admit that something like EWMH might be the
> best way to go about this.  (Especially sheets: sheets are
> document-modal dialogs, so I'm not sure it makes sense to have sheets
> and old-style document-modal dialogs.)  Actually, that's what I thought
> originally, but somebody said to me "how hard can it be?", and I
> couldn't convince myself it wouldn't work, so I tried implementing it. 
> Gtk+ widgets seemed like something I could wrap my head around fairly
> easily -- unlike X11.  (I'm a fearless man, but I'm scared to death of
> Xlib.)

I'm not sure that modal and only modal dialogs should be sheets -- vide
toolbar editor dialog - does its mode of operation count as "modal
dialog"? And it's perfect candidate to be sheet (it is in fact on MacOS
X, AFAICT from screenshots)

> So the current state of my implementation is: in limbo.  I don't know
> enough about X11 and window managers do be useful right away.  I may
> work on it in my spare time (a patch to Metacity to make it display
> document-modal dialogs as sheets?), but maybe not; no guarantees.  If
> anybody else wants to adopt this project, you have my blessing.

You don't plan on working on modals-as-sheets patch, or sheets and
drawers support as a whole?

> (If there are future emails on this subject, we probably shouldn't
> cross-post any more.  So let's put them on, say, gtk-devel-list, as per
> suggestion.)

Let be it

Cheers,
Maciej	

-- 
"Tautologizm to coś tautologicznego"
   Maciej Katafiasz <mnews2 wp pl>
       http://mathrick.blog.pl