RE: GNOME CVS: gtk+ matthiasc

["Bastian, Waldo" <waldo bastian intel com>]

>Hi Matthias,
>
>I really like the fact that we now have GtkLinkButton.  It's a neat
>little widget.  I don't like the fact that every instance of every
>clicked button has to handle the 'clicked' signal itself.
>
>We can add a call like gtk_about_dialog_set_url_hook() to the link
>button to set it globally for all link buttons, but I'd like to do
>better than that.  The user's browser preferences exist in GConf; lets
>try to get it out of there.
>
>We'd traditionally try to do this with gnome_program_init in libgnome.
>However, we're trying to deprecate those libs precisely because people
>didn't like adding an additional library just to get desktop support.
>Here are a couple other approaches we could take here:
>
>1. Make GTK+ depend on GConf
>   PROS: Makes this (and a lot of other similar problems) very easy
>   CONS: Doesn't work with OSX/Windows; likely to be very controversial
>
>2. Push it out to XSettings
>   PROS: Solves this specific problem in the short run.  Has the
>potential to be cross-desktop.
>   CONS: Doesn't really scale in the long run.  Also, XSettings is
>intended for cross-desktop settings, not everything.

Opening a URL is one of the things that the Portland initiative of
OSDL/FreeDesktop.org would like to address in a cross-toolkit way. See
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/PortlandIntegrationTasks

It's probably a good idea to coordinate a solution in that context.

Using a Xsettings sounds like a viable solution to me. In what regard do
you think that it doesn't scale well?

Cheers,
Waldo