GtkMessageDialog (was Re: pending stuff in havoc-patches)

[Darin Adler <darin eazel com>]

>> GtkMessageDialog
>> ===
>> 
>> A convenience widget that:
>> 
>> - sets title automatically
>> - sets buttons/action_id automatically
>> - packs a label 
>> - packs a big question mark icon or whatever
>> 
>> Qt, Motif, etc. all have this widget, I think it's useful.
>> Need a yes/no on its inclusion.
> 
> Yes. You can't write a proper GTK+ application without having to write
> this widget.

My 2 cents about this one: It ought to do line wrapping on the message in
the label. This is a problem with some of the gnome stock dialogs; message
authors have to hard-code line breaks, which can't be done well without
knowing the characteristics of the font and the screen. We made interim
Nautilus versions of the gnome calls that add the wrapping; at the moment
these calls just turn on the line wrap flag in GtkLabel, but I'd like to do
better soon.

The message box feature we added to Macintosh while I was working on System
7 in 1988 had this feature. It determined the line length based on
heuristics about keeping the shape of the dialog nicely rectangular (and
also taking into account the minimum width needed for the buttons). We had
some silly unfounded notions about the golden ratio, but a ratio of around
1.5 to 1.8 between height and width looks pretty good.

    -- Darin