Re: GtkFileChooser API work

[Tim Janik <timj gtk org>]

On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Owen Taylor wrote:

> > API: GtkFileChooserWidget vs. GtkFileChooserDialog
> > --------------------------------------------------
> >
> > The FOSDEM paper says this:
> >
> > 	On a large scale, one distinguishing feature of any API is
> > 	that the same set of methods, signals and properties is needed
> > 	in several places. We need these aspects of the file selection
> > 	interface in the file selection dialog, which is where people
> > 	will most often use them. But, to correspond to
> > 	GtkFontSelection and GtkColorSelection, we'll also need an
> > 	embeddable widget that has the same signature [...]
> >
> > Do we really want a GtkFileChooserWidget that is separate from
> > GtkFileChooserDialog?  When would people actually embed the file
> > chooser widget by themselves in other places?  For the color/font
> > selection widgets it makes sense, but I'm not sure it does for the
> > file chooser if the whole dialog is supposed to be extensible.
>
> I don't know of a lot of uses ... the only place I've seen an
> embeddable file selector is in Qt's 'designer' app.

being able to pack the file selection widget into cutomized windows
is prolly the #1 programmer request i've seen about the widget.
beast for instance goes through extreme lengths of hackery to
embedd the GtkFileSelection widget into a beast dialog that serves
as a sample library browser.
adding a file chooser to 2.4 that forces a window onto its users
will in my book repeat one of the worst mistakes of GtkFileSelection
and in the long term cause a variety of third-party hacks that either
replace file selection functionality or GtkFileChooser-forks (if that's
technicall suitable).

> The main reason for the split is simple consistency with the other
> dialogs. (Though you could argue that it's not really consistent
> in *how* it's done.)
>
> I think the overall design worked out pretty well, and will let
> us do replacable UIs in the future, which is somewhat important.
> And with the overall design GtkFileChooserWidget is basically free.

> Regards,
> 						Owne
>

---
ciaoTJ