Re: Should there be a way to leave the separator out of a GtkDialog?

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Guy Harris <gharris@flashcom.net> writes:
> A GtkDialog currently draws a separator between the action area and the
> rest of the dialog box; if the new GtkDialog is intended to be more
> widely used than the old one
> 
> 	1) should it still be used only in dialogs where the action
> 	   buttons are to be separated from the rest of the dialog box
> 	   by a separator (the file selection, font selection, and color
> 	   selection dialog boxes in 1.2.7 don't have such a separator)?
>

That's because they aren't GtkDialog subclasses and they are broken. :-)
 
> 	2) should all dialog boxes have such a separator?
> 

All dialog boxes should look the same. Whether this means separator or
no separator is less important.

> 	3) should there be a way to construct a dialog box without that
> 	   separator?
> 

There's no reason for this to be programmer-configurable IMO. It's
ctree_set_expander_style()-syndrome (named after the most blatant
example of the problem) - there is simply no good reason for a
programmer to ever set the CTree expander style, because it has no
functional importance, and is purely a matter of cosmetics and user
preference. Therefore letting the programmer set it results in UI
inconsistency, and delivers no real benefit. If this type of thing is
configurable, it should be configurable by the _user_, probably via
themes.

With the dialog, the programmer determined to commit
ctree_set_expander_style() evilness can always walk the widget tree,
find the separator, and remove it - or they can use GtkWindow - but I
don't see any reason to encourage this kind of bad practice by adding
API bloat to GTK+.

Havoc