Re: Various (needed?) windows-related changes

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 18:08:16 +0100
mETz <[email protected]> wrote:

> I'm currently preparing gkrellm 2.3.1 for windows and ran over a few
> problems so far.
> 
> First one is a small problem with the strftime-formats proposed by
> gkrellm. According to
> http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/ctime/strftime.html
> and
> http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fe06s4ak(VS.71).aspx
> the default clock and cal formats contain unsupported placeholders. Both
> "%l" and "%e" are in neither of the docs stated above and they don't
> show up on win32.
> 
> As a solution I'm now using two different sets of formats now:
> 
> --- Windows:
> "%#I:%M <span foreground=\"$A\"><small>%S</small></span>"
> "%#I:%M <span foreground=\"$A\"><small>%p</small></span>"	
> "%#H:%M <span foreground=\"$A\"><small>%S</small></span>"
> "%a <span foreground=\"$A\"><big><big>%#d</big></big></span> %b"
> "<big>%a %b <span foreground=\"$A\">%#d</span></big>"
> "%a <span foreground=\"cyan2\"><span
> font_desc=\"16.5\"><i>%#d</i></span></span> %b"
> 
> --- other OSes:
> "%l:%M <span foreground=\"$A\"><small>%S</small></span>"
> "%l:%M <span foreground=\"$A\"><small>%p</small></span>"	
> "%k:%M <span foreground=\"$A\"><small>%S</small></span>"
> "%a <span foreground=\"$A\"><big><big>%e</big></big></span> %b"
> "<big>%a %b <span foreground=\"$A\">%e</span></big>"
> "%a <span foreground=\"cyan2\"><span
> font_desc=\"16.5\"><i>%e</i></span></span> %b"
> 
> I hope this is ok with everybody as I don't feel like adding support for
> unsupported formatting chars on windows :)

It's not a problem, so define how you need it for Windows.

> Next is a bit more complex. Unfortunately GTK >= 2.12.2 seems to have a
> regression regarding GtkCombo (see
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=503326). One solution would be
> to ship GTK 2.10.x with the windows binaries and recommend that version
> for people who want to install GTK+ system-wide but I dislike shipping
> outdated GTK+ versions.
> As GtkCombo is deprecated for a long time I'm currently porting GKrellM
> to use GtkComboBox. The downside of this is that GKrellM will need at
> least GTK+ 2.4 which might cause problems on platforms that GKrellM
> supports but lack a GTK+ >= 2.4.

GTK 2.4 versions date back more than 3 years and I don't think supporting
that should be a priority and I'm in favor of replacing deprecated functions
as soon as is reasonable, so I would say go ahead with that.

> Another problem is assertions I see with GTK+ 2.12 when closing the
> preferences dialog. I don't know yet if these occur on non-win32 as well:
> (gkrellm.exe:1208): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion
> `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
> (gkrellm.exe:1208): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_destroy: assertion
> `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

I haven't seen that or had any other reports of it.
  
> The last one is rather cosmetic. I never really liked the preferences
> dialog that much, it looks quite crowded and "techy". New users I
> recommended GKrellM to often were confused by the amount of tabs and
> pages so I first had to explain quite a few things to them.
> As a first start I'm thinking about the following changes:
> 
> - remove the extra groupbox inside every tab, there's a border around
> the tabwidget anyway

I'm OK with that.

> - provide fileselector buttons for command-fields so people can select
> an application to start. At least on windows this is needed because
> applications usually aren't found in $PATH. The best way for unix would
> be to display the apps found in /usr/share/applications, i.e. parse all
> these desktop files. I fear that this will pull in a lot of library
> dependencies.

As long as we keep the ability to type in arbitrary commands.  I've always
aimed for an easy install so I would be cautious about bringing in extra
library dependencies.  They might would need to be checked for in the
configure script.

> - move all the information from the "Info" tabs into an external help
> (maybe docbook based?) and into tooltips. The tab approach is not very
> helpful because you need to switch forth and back between the settings-
> and the info-tab when you're unfamiliar with the substitution variables

I'm not sure there's enough benefit to warrant the effort of doing this.
How would this affect all the translation files and how would all of the
plugins get ported?

Bill

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