Re: ideas on improving the performance of gtk_tree_view

["Morten Welinder" <mortenw gnome org>]

On 3/23/07, Federico Mena Quintero <federico ximian com> wrote:

> * 5000 columns is definitely abusing the *user*.  Who cares about the
> toolkit.

Federico,

where you think of "foo", someone else will want to write
"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".

You seem to be making a two-step conclusion:

1. At 5000 columns (or rows for that matter), scrolling with either mouse
  or keyboard will be an unpleasant way to get to the point you want.

2. Therefore 5000 columns (or rows) cannot work well in a GUI.

I agree with 1, but I know that 2 is wrong.  I have seen it work with
considerably more than 20000 rows.  I cannot think of a good
reason to use that many columns, but I am willing to believe my
imagination isn't wild enough.

The case I am familiar with is a large, sorted list of names.  You get
to the initially interesting point by typing the first few letters and then
you can scroll to nearby entries.  It worked very well, even with people
who were completely computer illiterate (and bad spellers at that).

Whether that kind of thing works depends a bit on corpus.  For example,
it wouldn't work with the all-China phone book.  That's how many pages
of "Li ..."?  :-)

Morten