Re: This is a Troll!

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

Franck Martin wrote:

> It seems that the file dialog is the major contention issue in gnome...
>
> I have seen several propositions but it stills stays the old one because
> lack of agreement between people.
>
> The solution would be to consider the File Dialog as a theme. Gnome on
> loading loads the File Dialog Library which has a well known set of API.
> So the File Dialog can be as simple as the GTK dialog or be very complex
> (directory creation, shortcuts, integration with nautilus, ...) while
> maintaining a simple interface to the application (return the filename
> and directory selected, regex to filter files,...).
>
> The best file dailogs would be able to compete between each others and
> one will come out of the lot to be the official in a future gnome
> release.
>
> Cheers. 
>
> Franck Martin
> Network and Database Development Officer
> SOPAC South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission
> Fiji
> E-mail: franck sopac org <mailto:franck sopac org> 
> Web site: http://www.sopac.org/
> <http://www.sopac.org/> Support FMaps: http://fmaps.sourceforge.net/
> <http://fmaps.sourceforge.net/> 
> Certificate: https://www.sopac.org/ssl/ 
>
> This e-mail is intended for its addresses only. Do not forward this
> e-mail without approval. The views expressed in this e-mail may not be
> necessarily the views of SOPAC.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Edward A. Falk [mailto:falk efalk org]
> Sent: Saturday, 14 September 2002 5:22 
> To: gnome-devel-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: This is a Troll!
>
>
>
>
> Ok, FWIW, I've been using Gnome/Gtk extensively for a couple of years
> now, and have several projects on sourceforge.  Most significantly
> a cad program at xdraft.sourceforge.net.
>
> There are lots of little nits that I could pick, but all-in-all it's
> the best GUI toolkit I've ever used, and I've used quite a few.  I've
> even written a couple.
>
> Let me pick a couple of big nits, thought, that I would love to see
> addressed in the not-to-distant future.  I'll even volunteer to do some
> of this work if people want.
>
>
> The file-chooser is a little clumsy.  Its look and feel could be
> improved
> someowhat (e.g. icons for the "create dir", "delete file", etc.
> buttons.)
> Also, it's patterned after the Motif file chooser, which isn't that
> great
> a model.  The (I hate to say it) windoze model is more useable, I find.
> I found from a programming and user standpoint that the file filtering
> mechanism left a lot to be desired.
>  
There is some work to develop a new file selector going on in libegg at 
the moment which you might find interesting.  I guess it will be 
targetted at GTK 2.4 at this stage.  Note that putting the file selector 
at any layer above GTK will lead to inconsistency (not all apps will use 
the gnome libraries, and it would be nice for plain gtk+ apps to fit in 
as best as possible).

James.

--
Email: james daa com au              | Linux.conf.au   http://linux.conf.au/
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/ | Jan 22-25   Perth, Western Australia.