Re: GtkText widget and maintenance of the GTK.

[Owen Taylor <otaylor gtk org>]

Christopher James Lahey <clahey@umich.edu> writes:

> I'm curious how the GTK is currently maintained.  Are there seperate
> managers for the different widgets or is it something else?

There is no formal assignment of widgets to people, though for
widgets that were primarily written by one person, that person
generally is considered to have primary responsibility for 
that widget.

Examples:

  CList : Jay Painter
  SpinButton : Lars Hamann + Stefan Jeske
  Combo : Paolo Molaro
  Tree/TreeItem : Jerome Bolliet 
  Paned widgets : Myself  

Also, sometimes somebody takes a special interest in an existing
widget and "adopts" it.

  NoteBook : Hamann + Jeske
  Entry + Text : Myself

There are obviously many widgets not listed above. Most of those
are associated with no one in particular. Even for the ones that
have a "primary maintainer", that isn't exclusive. Other people
will frequently make bug fixes and small modifications to such
widgets when they are obviously correct and needed.
 
> Also, I'm curious who, if it work this way, maintains the GtkText widget.

I've taken primary responsibility for the Text widget over the
last few months. The best way to find something like this out
is to look in the ChangeLog, and see whose name is listed
with the changes.

There is a bunch of stuff that needs doing on the Text widget.
(See the TODO). Some of the more major highlights:

 Additional API functions.
 Horizontal scrolling
 Customizeable key bindings
 Support for multi-byte characters. (Making this efficient will
   take some work)
 
I'd like to get some feedback on people using the Text widget
on additional API features that are considered desirable:

To start off with:

 - Changing the properties of existing text
 - Translating x/y coordinates <=> position in text
 - Moving the cursor (Thanks for the patch for that. 
   I haven't had a chance to look at it in detail yet.)
 
There is obviously a lot of work to be done on the Text widget. It
is a high priority for me, but not my highest priority. If someone
else wants to do some of the work, that would certainly be
appreciated. (For the more major items, contact me first, since
I have some ideas about how they should be implemented)

Regards,
                                        Owen