Re: Deprecation of gtk_progress_bar_set_bar_style()

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 17:42, Tommy McDaniel wrote:

> > > I couldn't find anything. Why is this function
> > > deprecated? Is there another, presumably better
> > way to
> > > set whether the bar is discrete or continuous, or
> > was
> > > that deemed by someone to be a stupid feature?
> > That
> > > seems like a feature I myself would like.
> > 
> > Allowing to to be app-settable was deemed to be a
> > stupid 
> > feature. 
> > 
> > Why should some apps have progress bars that show
> > discrete
> > blocks, and other apps have progress bars that are
> > continuous?
> 
[...]

> Why not even give the application
> developer the option? Is the 'wrong' style of progress
> bar worse than a predominantly neon pink and glowing
> green application, or one with any number of other
> annoying or downright retarded properties? I'm of the
> belief that, in general, the more freedom the
> programmer has, the better. There are clearly worse
> things one can do, and which GTK allows, than have the
> wrong style of progress bar.

Actually, while we do have gtk_widget_modify_fg/bg,
it's pretty hard to make *all* your widgets hot pink
and glowing green without writing a GTK+ theme.

Generally, by giving flexibility to the application
programmer, you are taking it away from the theme
writer and thus desktop environment and you are taking 
it away from the user.

Roughly speaking:

 - If some UI aspect would make sense to do in
   one application and not in another, it should
   be an application setting.

 - If an option would make sense for some themes,
   and not others, we make it a "style property"
   an option that is set in a theme RC file.

 - If an option would make sense for some users
   and not others, we making it a GtkSetting 
   configuration option.

Letting apps set things that should be theme or
user settings just means that the users get the
imposed preferences of each app author and get
inconsistency, rather than getting a consistent
set of preferences that _they_ want.

I don't think we made discrete vs. continuous 
setting a style property ... partly because we
had to still support the deprecated function.
But that's clearly if it is an option, it should
be a style property, not something applications
set.

Regards,
                             Owen