Re: GtkGrid design document

[Lorenzo Gil Sanchez <lgs sicem biz>]

> If all we really want is a GtkTreeView with different editing behavior,
> then it seems to me we should just build those capabilities into
> GtkTreeView.
> 
I'd love to see that in GtkTreeView since that is what I was asking for
some time ago. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed and learned a lot
while writting the grid widget but at the beginning the only reason I
start writing was because it was absolutely needed in my project and I
got frustrated with the TreeView.

I suppose I was (and I am) too unexperienced to add such behaviour to
the TreeView but it people think it is worthy I will be happy to help
enhacing the TreeView this way.

> On the other hand, there are certainly cases where you want something
> different from GtkTreeView:
> 
>  - Efficient handling of many columns and sparse data
Do you mean here that the header shouldn't be made from GtkButtons and
only made of a regular gdkwindow? I guess that would allow to have 10k
columns without memory worries.

>  - Row headers as well as column headers
Sorry, I forgot to mention that GtkGrid has row headers

>  - Rectangular selection
> 
This is planned but still need to be studied since all the cells of the
same column share the same type it will be difficult to allow random
copy and paste of rectangular selections.

> But I don't have a good sense of what apps would use such a widget
> at the moment. Having that idea is core to designing the widget.
> 
Ok, Sven and John Cupitt have already pointed two possible uses of the
Grid. I think it would be also nice for Gnucash and for most ERP
(Enterprise-Resource-Planning) programms.

As far as I know the only two ERP programms for GNOME are the GNUe
project [1] and Fisterra [2] and they both lack the grid widget. GNUe
uses GTK+1.X IIRC and Fisterra 2 is being developed and I have talked
with its developers and they told me a grid will be useful.

Basically what an ERP program does is manipulate database data and it
does need an easy way to edit big chunks of data. That is what my
project is all about, and that is why I need the grid.

Just because we don't have any famous GNOME application that need it I
don't think there is no neccesity for such a widget. Maybe home users
don't really need this kind of programs but they are a must for company
users. Here in Spain most of the small and medium size companies use
some Access customized program to solve their needs so I guess the user
base is potentially pretty big.

Regards

Lorenzo

[1] http://www.gnue.org
See this screenshot:
http://www.gnuenterprise.org/gallery/forms5.jpg
it looks pretty similar to a Grid, isn't it :)

[2] http://www.fisterra.org/
See this screenshot:
http://www.fisterra.org/media/screenshots_fisterra_2/countries_use_case_edit
it seems that they need an extra dialog to edit the data in each row of
their TreeView. I guess a grid will fit better in that case.