Re: Developing a GTK2 GUI

 --- Charles Ezell <[email protected]> escreveu: > 
> >Wouldn't be easier if we use something like libglade to design the
> ui?
> >
> >I mean, it's good to have a window builder, but they can become ugly
> >and non functional at a certain point, if no layout info is provided
> to
> >it.
> 
> I was waiting for this. :)
> It's a good idea, but the answer (for the config windows) is no.

:)

I imagined that, I myself was not that convinced because of the twice
work needed :)
   But I want to comment/ask on some points...


> Please keep reading for as to why.  If I am not clear enough or you
> want
> more info, please ask. :)
> 
> >However, putting too much layout info in mplayer's config would
> bloat
> >it.
> 
> Worse, the layout info would be worthless for some toolkits /
> platforms.
> I do not know of a way to represent it in a meaningful way for enough
> 
> platforms.
> They are too different.
> 
> For instance, writing a gui builder for GTK is much
> easier than writing one for win32.  Why?  Because GTK uses
> containers/boxes 
> to hold controls.
> In GTK, you just put controls in boxes and don't worry about the 
> corordinates
> because those are handled automatically.  This is so nice, because
> windows always tend to look good --even when they are resized.

Yes, I know that... win32 is the other way (coordinates-based) and I
don't know Mac to tell...


> >What about have a window builder that constructs glade's xml and
> then
> >one could go there and manually tweak the look.
> >    Mplayer gtk ui could be as easy as calling libglade!
> 
> There are a couple problems with this.
> 
> First, you would be doing the work twice, something I never like to
> do.

Neither do I :(


> Second, if I understand A'rpi correctly, is that the whole system
> is supposed to be dynamic.  If I do my job correctly,
> you guys should be able to add dozens of modules to mplayer and the
> users
> will not have to upgrade the GUI.  This isn't going to be possible
> if xml tweaking is involved.

How dynamic it would be... it will generate those windows at compile
time or at run time?

 
> Third, the core gui builder code isn't that complex and
> the config design is well thought out.  This makes things much
> easier.
> If I run into problems, we'll work things out.

My only hope is that the ui doesn't become something unlogical and
non-intuitive... sometimes it's better to put things together because
they're related, but doesn't worth to put them in a Frame or a Tab...
so maybe we can have at least 2 kind of groups: Visual (Frames, Tabs)
and Non-Visual.... or 3: Frames, Tabs, Non-Visual...
   Any ideas on that?

Also, maybe we could have the tab-order specified somewhere, so we can
arrange items based on that order... maybe that list could be other
place...

And (just to make you crazy ;) sometimes it's cool to have small items
arranged in 2/3 columns 

 
> >But, there comes a problem: how to keep track from human (manual)
> >interventions? Maybe the window builder could try to keep the old
> >layout (and maybe learn with it). Maybe we could keep the manual
> >changes as patches and apply it over and over (ugly, but easier).
> 
> That would be very hard to do and maintain.  I am probably going to
> have
> to write some algorithms for control placement (mainly how many
> controls on 
> a
> page is too many),  I will tweak those as necessary.
> The most important thing is not jamming stuff together.

IDEA: Every page you put, please I beg you to use a scroll-able content
(automatic scrollbars), so if someone have a 800x600 with big fonts,
things that generally looks well in 1024x768 will probably overflow the
screen... that happens a lot with linux gui apps :(


 
> >PS: IMHO grouping is something that could be in mplayer config
> struct,
> >and with that we can get a almost good GUI. Maybe just on releases
> we
> 
> Yes, I believe you are correct about this (i.e more than just a
> flag).
> I'm working on it.  But, as I said earlier, I'm going to make sure it
> works 
> first
> and the impact on the rest of the system is minimal.
> 

Ok.
 
> Thank you for your ideas + comments,

You're welcome.

Gustavo

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