Re: GMenuModel has landed

[Matthew Brush <mbrush codebrainz ca>]

On 12/12/2011 10:45 AM, Ryan Lortie wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-12-11 at 18:24 -0800, Matthew Brush wrote:
> > My (probably misguided) opinion is that if this type of stuff can't go
> > into GTK+ for some reason, there should be a `glib-ui` or `glib-gnome`
> > library or something like this.  I have doubts how many apps linking to
> > GIO without GTK+ are going to need such a model, either because they
> > don't have a UI at all or are using some other toolkit which likely
> > provides a mechanism of its own for this.
>
> We had this conversation in context of GSettings, a few years ago.  It
> wasn't really IO, so why should it go in GIO?  We threw around the idea
> of libgplatform or libdesktop and so on and decided that we should just
> treat libgio as this.  That's when we started (only half-jokingly)
> insisting that GIO stands for "GLib Interfaces and Objects".

I think a separate G library would be an *excellent* idea, much more 
sensible and practical from a "consumer" (app developer) POV.  A quick 
scan through the API docs, I'd nominate the following to be moved to a 
separate library:

  - Icons
  - Settings
  - Application support
  - (the menu stuff)

Everything else in there seems to be, even if not purely "IO", at least 
used by or in conjunction with the other stuff that is (I think).

> I have a long-held belief that the "model" side of things that are not
> directly related to widgets should be kept outside of the toolkit.  I'd
> support, for example, a GtkTreeModel replacement to be merged into
> libgio.

Yep, I certainly don't disagree with this either, just that it's strange 
to put this type of stuff in the IO library (IMO).  It feels like 
there's some stuff in the G stack that's looking for a home and 
everything just winds up in GIO, like it's a dumping ground for 
miscellaneous stuff (which I guess it is as you said, presently).

I just fear people will start calling GIO "bloated" and GNOME-bound  and 
might cause people who would've otherwise used this excellent IO library 
to either re-write their own or look elsewhere.

Just my $0.02 as a Joe Random Hacker :)

Cheers,
Matthew Brush