Re: Sheets and Drawers - status

[Ken Harris <ken bitpoetry com>]

Hi Maciej,

> It was more a question -- "how MacOS X does them so they don't suck in
> corner cases?", rather than suggestion of inherent suckability ;)

I guess that's the hallmark of good design: having used them, I'm not
sure what corner cases are hard.  It just feels natural.  :-)

(If I had to think of one, one corner case is "what if there's no room
for the drawer?"  Mac OS shows it on the side where there's room.  If
there's no room on either side, maybe it shrinks the window -- not
sure.  On Goban, for example, this is never an issue (go boards are
taller than wide, and screens are typically wider than tall) -- it's
always going to be partially up to application developers to use the
tools in ways that don't suck.

> I'm not sure that modal and only modal dialogs should be sheets -- vide
> toolbar editor dialog - does its mode of operation count as "modal
> dialog"? And it's perfect candidate to be sheet (it is in fact on MacOS
> X, AFAICT from screenshots)

Ok, maybe this is another corner case.  I've thought about this before,
and it's slightly weird -- if for no other reason than sheets for these
drop down from the toolbar, instead of the window's titlebar.  On the
Mac, I'd say these are definitely modal (you can't do anything else with
the window), but there the toolbar seems more like part of the
titlebar.  On X11/Gtk+, the toolbar definitely feels like part of the
window content.  So maybe you'd have to do some more WM hinting here to
get it to act right.

> You don't plan on working on modals-as-sheets patch, or sheets and
> drawers support as a whole?

Sorry if that was unclear.  I don't plan on working on sheets/drawers
for Gnome/Gtk+/Metacity at all any more, for at least the near future. 
Maybe when I get one or two of my other projects finished I'll revisit
it.


- Ken