Re: [gtk-list] Re: GTK widget: Round dial

[Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds kjahds com>]

On Thu, 8 Jan 1998 raster@redhat.com wrote:

> On  8 Jan, Andy Tai shouted:
> ->  > 
> ->  > PLEASE.. use lots of child windows.. even the dial as a shaped one?
> ->  > why? well make my lifel easier when i get round to making these things
> ->  > "themeable".... yet.. i'm currently writing a gdk version of imlib so i
> ->  > can load images sanely and scale them into pixmaps... and i'm going to
> ->  > extend gtk to allow any button/widget to be solely composed of pixmap
> ->  > images caled to fit.. thsi si sort of  part of gtk's themability for
> ->  > gnome...  
> ->  > 
> ->  
> ->  Please don't Enlightenment-ize gtk... Please DON'T...   All these sort of
> ->  features should be optional, NOT IN GTK CORE.  Functionality is more important
> ->  than look and feel.   
> 
> the functionality is already there... i'm adding the embelishments.. if
> you didnt read my other mails you may have missed the bit about it
> being "optional". ie if you dont specicy a themebed background pixmap
> for a widget it will behave exactly as it does now. I see nothing
> harmful about this. 

To add a comment opposing Andy Tai's: we've seen all sorts of libAW
variants, to produce the effect of several different widget sets (Next,
W'95, basic 3-D, and probably several more). The problem is that most of
them aren't quite binary compatible, and even if they are, fiddling with
duplicate shared libraries isn't the nicest configuration mechanism. 

It would be a very nice change if Gtk had (or has already) just enough
functionality to allow complete style redesigns to be plugged in to the
library with minimal work, _and with minimal invasion of compiled
programs_. It seems feasible that Gtk could be taught to dlopen libraries
for load-time and run-time replacement widget sets, and the pixmap stuff
can be done purely through existing config files.

No, Gtk certainly doesn't need a complete Next (or OpenView, or Mac, or
whatever) widget set built into it, but I feel strongly that the capacity
for such is a Good Thing. 

-- 
Kenneth Albanowski (kjahds@kjahds.com, CIS: 70705,126)