Re: GtkBuilder partial tree construction

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Tue, 2007-06-26 at 10:42 -0300, Johan Dahlin wrote:
> Murray Cumming wrote:
> > On Tue, 2007-06-26 at 14:19 +0300, Kalle Vahlman wrote:
> >> 2007/6/26, Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>:
> >>> libglade's _new() function has a "root" parameter:
> >>> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/libglade/gladexml.html#GLADE-XML-NEW
> >>>
> >>> This is necessary because libglade otherwise instantiates all the items
> >>> in the file. Does GtkBuilder instead only instantiate the objects when
> >>> you actually use gtk_builder_get_object()?
> >> See bug 447998 for discussion on this:
> >>
> >>   http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=447998
> >>
> >> but in short: no, it instantiates them as a part of the
> >> parsing/building process and it's not going to be easy to do it
> >> properly otherwise.
> > 
> > OK, so we need to have one file per window, which the glade-3 developers
> > might not be so happy about. I guess, the gtk-builder-convert script
> > should be changed to create lots of individual files.
> 
> I'd like to support partial construction of object trees, but as Kalle
> pointed out, it's very complicated given how the xml parser of GtkBuilder
> is implemented.

If we (erm, you, I suppose) don't manage to fix this regression
(compared to libglade), and allow this API be shipped with GTK+ 2.12,
then while we are waiting for GTK+ 2.14, applications and tools will be
adapted to use split-up files, and we could have years of performance
problems due to lots of little files.

So I think this should be a blocker. I'd rather revert GtkBuilder than
ship it with this bug. Sorry to sound harsh. I just want suggest how we
can have quality without delays, if necessary.

> > I am concerned that this makes it impossible to use GtkBuilder to define
> > the properties for a single widget, without instantiating a useless
> > invisible window object. That's a technique that I use currently.
> 
> That sounds like a sensible use case.
> 
> I'm using a similar technique in Kiwi, but I do actually instantiate the
> main window and throw it away.

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com