Re: Future of Canvas on GTK+ (and probably GNOME)

[muppet <scott asofyet org>]

On Feb 11, 2005, at 3:21 PM, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> An important question is what a canvas widget is for. In the GNOME 1.x
> days, GnomeCanvas was used to implement a lot of custom widgets.
> However, in GNOME 2.x that is very uncommon; because of accessibility
> concerns and because GTK+ itself provides anti-flicker capabilities.
>
> So it would be interesting to map where the canvas is still used. I'd
> assume gnome-games and nautilus for example.

I use GnomeCanvas for interactive structured graphics --- a view where 
the user directly manipulates shapes and objects that represent things 
in a document that aren't text cells.  Think of flowcharts or graphs or 
things of that nature.  Having canvas items which are basically drawing 
elements with events is really handy, relieving the application 
programmer of responsibility for tedious things like hit testing.

Also keep in mind that many apps of this nature are small-audience, 
special use, in-house things.

--
The door is locked.  I tried to open it, but the lock is harder to pick 
than a broken nose.
  -- Sensei, on 'I, Ninja'