Fw: Draggable Toolbars, problems & suggestions

["TG" <tg excoriate net>]

Hi. I was comparing how draggable toolbars work in GTK, QT, and the normal
Windows toolkit. GTK seems to fair badly as it is.

Observations :- 

* GTK toolbars continually update when you drag them, but there is a lot of
flickering/ugliness as they redraw. Occasionally the entire toolbar area is
blanked and hangs for a while if you detach a toolbar.

* QT toolbars just display an outline when you drag them, hence removing the
possibility of the above problem. However, the outline doesn't snap to possible
row locations, hence row positioning is fiddly. They do allow for stacking of
multiple toolbars on one row, and truncation of toolbars with a drop-down list
of hidden elements, these are both very handy features.

* Windows toolbars (I looked at explorer) have by far the best overall
behavior. They allow multiple toolbars on one row, and toolbar truncating, much
like QT. When dragging horizontally within a row, movement is limited to the
horizontal axis, and they are redrawn constantly but very smoothly, presumably
because this action can be guaranteed not to affect to the geometry of the
underlying toolbar area. Dragging between rows works in a similar fashion to
GTK - they snap to the new row when the cursor moves between row boundaries -
except that they redraw only seems to occur once as needed, ie when the move
happens. GTK redraws it the whole time.

Generally, the Windows behavior is lightning fast, and just seems to be the
"right thing". I guess that people have noticed there is room for improvement,
but I'm interested in what the plans are for the next GTK, and whether people
are looking at more mature toolkits for ideas.

Thanks for your time, 
-- 
TG