Re: GtkCanvas requirements?

[Tristan Van Berkom <tvb gnome org>]

On Tue, 2007-04-24 at 08:12 +0000, Benjamin Otte wrote:
[...]
> So what does that mean for a GtkCanvas?
> 
> The canvas should make it easy to load the full graphical description from a
> file created by a graphic artist. 
[...]

I strongly agree and strongly disagree (which might or might not mean
that we are in agreement ;-D )

IMO GtkCanvas should be very very low level and simple, have support
for canvas items etc to be implemented at will in any programatical
ways thinkable, GtkFlashCanvas on the other hand can feel free to
implement vectorial animated objects as canvas items (or however
the implementation would be, up to the GtkFlashCanvas maintainer)
and load them from an swf stream...

I think it is definitly important to keep in mind the possibility
of a canvas being used to render html, flash or other graphic artist
based material, but we should also be carefull and take baby steps:
we should take this oportunity to focus on how powerfull and fine-tuned
we can make the essential base canvas tools/objects and make that
available as soon as possible, doubtlessly GtkHtmlCanvases and
GtkFlashCanvases will organically evolve from that point and eventually
one of those could be included in gtk+ as well... I think that 
discussion is for another day.

I also have to support Carlos where he says:
<quote who="Carlos Garnocho">
But, even being the canvas a great excuse to begin this effort, I don't
think it's going to offer enough improvements to the canvas itself to
deserve such a long wait, I think leaving potential API users with the
current canvas buffet for (say) these two years would harm us in the
medium/long term.
</quote>

Cheers,
                  -Tristan