Re: GtkBuilder status

[Tristan Van Berkom <tristan van berkom gmail com>]

Tristan Van Berkom wrote:

> I'm afraid I'll have to take at least one day to better my knowlage about
> exactly how GtkAction works, but from the little I already know and my 
> first glances...
> I dont see why the menu items cant be prefabricated with actions 
> attached,
> and the action groups made available by the GtkMergable implementors
> (allowing for seemless integration of get_accel_group() and such).
>
> I will delve a little further into the action code and come up with 
> something
> a little more solid...
   Now that I've taken a moment to take a closer look at GtkActions... 
I feel a little
more enthusiastic :-)

I would propose we take the following steps to use GtkAction without 
using UIManager:

o Make GtkAction available to GtkButton, GtkToggle/CheckButton, 
GtkRadioButton
  and any other GtkWidgets that make sence

o A widget should be able to register to an existing action via a 
property either
  on the GtkWidgetClass itself or some GtkActivatableIface. Setting 
this "action"
  property on a widget should result in its getting registered to the 
action's
  proxy list (and unregistered from the previously connected action 
ofcourse).

o As mentioned in the previous mail... action groups can be made 
available by
  the Mergable, but I would propose that they be provided by 
GtkContainer... which
  can now simply recurse over the hierarchy and collect the actions at 
any desired
  level of the heirarchy; GtkWindows could be made to setup its 
accel_group without
  any added code too (if so desired).

o A decision would have to be made here to either depricate the 
following apis
  along with the UIManager:

GtkWidget*  gtk_action_create_menu_item     (GtkAction *action);
GtkWidget*  gtk_action_create_tool_item     (GtkAction *action);

  or to add an api:

GtkWidget*  gtk_action_create_widget     (GtkAction *action);

  for the cases where it would create a regular button, toggle, radio 
or whatnot, I dont
  see any reason to create widgets based on actions without the need to 
build menus
  using UIManager though.

Note that extending the actions themselves represents a little work that 
has to
be done, but that extention isnt really required yet. The point here is 
just that
actions are usefull as an abstraction between the UI and buissiness 
logic of any
app, so they probably shouldnt be limited to only menus and toolbars.

Cheers,
                                          -Tristan