Re: align vs expand vs grid

[Benjamin Otte <otte gnome org>]

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 5:12 AM, Havoc Pennington <hp pobox com> wrote:
> this should Just Work because the grid layout code should not
> work with an area exceeding the children's natural size if the grid
> isn't set to FILL and the children aren't expanding.
>
This is the only thing I'm interested in: no expanding children
(default) with align set to FILL (also default) and getting assigned
extra space. So this is how stuff looks in Glade before you start
tuning align and expand flags. My whole previous emails all looked at
just this case. Everything else is well-defined behavior and defines
very well where to put extra space.
The only question I'd like answered is "what is the sanest way to
handle extra space for a container, in particular the grid?"

> What I was arguing in
> https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2010-October/msg00072.html
> I guess is that adding spacing is more useful than passing through to
> the children, since you can set the children to expand if you want
> pass through to children, while adding the spacing is an
> otherwise-unavailable feature.
>
I have multiple problems with this approach:
1) It's the default behavior in that it's used when you create widget
trees in Glade or when you write simple demo apps.
2) I'd argue it's almost never what you want as most of the time looks
crappier than the other solutions.
3) It fails KISS - I'd never expect that behavior if I didn't know how
GtkGrid works
So I fear that people that design their first GTK app will be very
confused about what is happening and will have to learn about expand
and align way earlier than they'd need to


Benjamin