Re: Suggestion: View-pane

Well it's not really C++ that's the problem, it's the general idea of
having a one thing to do it all approach. Anything you can do in C++ you
can do in Java. Same goes with many other languages, object oriented or
not. You just have to approach the coding in a different manner.

KDE does what you're thinking of in a rather nice manner (ie - how if you
have an IOSlave installed [local/ftp/webdav/fish] you can open any
document [html/pdf/image] in konqueror).

If you're talking about something similar to what KDE has going for it
(which is awesome) it really needs to be implemented on a higher level
(like in a desktop environment, not the windowing system). So we don't
have a server (or even the windowing system libraries) worrying about what
kind of file we are trying to view. The application (or a library in the
Desktop Environment for that application) can determine what file it is
and setup the propper widget. IMHO the drawing should still be done on a
canvas widget since different applications will have different ideas on
how to draw HTML among other things.

Keep the actual windowing system focused on what it was meant to do,
create widgets and render them. Not interpretting HTML or TeX or anything
like that.

Regards,
James

> thanks guys for the comments, on seeing them I do have to apologise. I
> have been mucking about Java programming for a while back and have still
> got the mindset of superclasses, extending classess, implenting classes
> etc.
>
> What I had in mind was a 'one thing suits all' which does not work in
> C++ and would result in the enforcement of  a set of rules which
> everybody must follow.
>
> It's going to take me a while to get up to speed with the C++ languague
> and getting rid of concepts built up by using proprietry code.
>
>
>