Re: Outstanding GTK+ patches

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Lars Hamann <lars@gtk.org> writes:

> On Fri, Feb 18, 2000 at 07:18:45PM -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> > Here is the (embarrassingly long) list of outstanding patches
> > on gtk.org. I've roughly classed them by effort they take
> > to be applied and whether I think they should be applied. 
> > The notes below were written rather quickly, so I apologize
> > if they are cryptic in places. If you want more details on
> > any of the notes below, let me know.
> 
> 
> > gtk-adrian-990224-0
> > 
> >  Adds "shadow type" to scrolled-window, removing the need for
> >  widgets like GtkViewport and GtkClist to draw their own shadows.
> >  Also allows adding shadows to the Scrolled-Window + Layout
> >  combination nicely. Should go in 1.3.
> 
> I'm a bit unsure whether that patch should really go in.
> While it may be the "normal case" to add viewports, text widgets
> and clists to scrolled windows, there are enough places where
> text widgets for example work without scrolled windows. In those
> cases the developers have to add their frameless widgets to a 
> gtk_frame. That looks a bit inconsistent too. We still have
> a few set_shadow_type functions afterwards. So maybe it would
> be better to make gtk_scrolled_window at least a successor of
> gtk_frame ?
> Another question is, how far do you want to go ?
> Remove only the frame of viewports and clist ? In that case
> gtktext would be a special case when adding to a scrolled_window.
> Also remove the frame of gtk_text ? ... So why not remove the
> frame of gtk_entry ?

The reason why I'd consider this patch a good thing is that it
puts the code for adding a shadow in one place instead of scattering
it repeatedly in CList, Text, Viewport, etc. In fact, one
place where we would definitely want this capability is for
GtkLayout - right now, there is simply no way to add a shadow
between a scrolled window and the layout within.

It will make a lot of the geometry-calculation code simpler for all
these widgets, and saves windows, since the frame can simply be drawn
on the parent widget of the NO_WINDOW scrolled-window.  Right now the
viewport needs a separate window to display the frame, and the layout
would also need it if a shadow type argument was added to it.

I'd say that we should only remove the frame from the scrollable
widgets. (You could also leave it there temporarily
and remove it in some future release). 

IMO, GtkText should pretty much always be put in scrolled-window,
since otherwise the user can type too much text, and get 
inaccessible portions. But if it isn't in one, than adding
it to a frame works fine and is consistent with the way
you add a shadow to any other random widget.

Regards,
                                        Owen