Re: [Nemiver-list] some questions

["Jonathon Jongsma" <jonathon jongsma domain hid>]

On 8/31/07, A. Gordon <agordon88 domain hid> wrote:
> I have some questions about hacking nemiver:
>
> 1. Is it possible to "make" and test nemiver, without doing a complete
> "make install" ?

not currently, I'm afraid

> It seems the main program tries to load library modules and it always
> looks in "/usr/lib"...
>
> if I "make" nemiver in the source directory and try to execute
> "./src/nemiver", the old modules are still loaded from "/usr/lib",
> instead of my new and updated modules in the local directory.
>
>
> Same thing happens for "xml" files - there are
> "get_absolute_resource_path" functions that insist on loading the "xml"
> files from "/usr/lib/nemiver/plugins/...." instead of the local directory.
>
> So every time I change something and want to test it, and have to "su"
> and "make install" - quite time consuming...
>
> Is there a better way ?

As I said above, you currently have to install nemiver in order to run
it.  I don't think it would take a huge amount of effort to change
nemiver to look first in the working directory and then look for
installed files.  There may be some security implications to loading
executable files from the current working directory, but I don't think
that's really an issue.  I would think a patch to enable this would be
gladly accepted (Dodji, speak up if you disagree)

> 2. I would like to suggest a small change in the "variables" view.
> instead of using a "tree" (for Function arguments and Local Variables"),
> I suggest to add a fourth column which will simply state the "scope" of
> the variable.
>
> The reason for this small change is because vertical screen estate is
> very scarce, and having two lines that don't provide actual information
> is not that good...
>
> also, because I like using the keyboard, the "tree" just requires extra
> work for me :-)
>
> If you think it's acceptable, I'll try to implement it.

I'm not totally sure about this one.  Not because I don't think that
vertical screen real estate is scarce, but because my eventual goal is
to make the variables view (and all of the views) into dockable
widgets.  If they're dockable widgets, the user could place them
anywhere in the workbench (for example along the side of the screen
instead of the bottom).  So I don't know if it's worth making too many
changes to accomodate the current 'bottom-of-the-screen' layout since
those widgets are not necessarily going to stay there forever.
You also mentioned keyboard navigation issues, however.  That's a
slightly different issue.  Can you explain how these two category rows
make it more difficult to use with the keyboard?

> 3. (keyboard again) - key handling inside the source view is quite
> strange. "up" or "down" keys don't move the cursor to the previous/next
> line, but instead switch to the next GTK widget...
>
> What do you think is the best place to change that ?

hmm, that's definitely something that should be changed.  I don't know
off the top of my head where that would need to be changed.  I'd have
to look at it.  Dodji might know better than me since he's more
familiar with the source editor code.

> Attached is an improved keyboard binding patch for
> variables/stack/terminal/etc views, as per Jonathon suggestions.

Great! I'll take a look and commit it soon.

-- 
jonner