Re: A GTK+ roadmap update

[Cody Russell <cody jhu edu>]

Hi Matthias,

Thanks for posting this roadmap, and sorry for responding to it a month
late.

One thing I don't see on that roadmap that I was hoping to see is some
mention of new drag-and-drop API.  I recall seeing Benjamin talking
about it on irc at some point, but I haven't followed up since then.  I
see one of the items on the list is cross-platform story, and on Windows
the selection and drag-and-drop pieces have long been pretty broken. 
And the APIs are pretty difficult to even understand (at least for me),
so that's made it difficult to improve.

I have a branch of gtk-2-24 locally that I did a lot of hacking to in an
effort to get dnd working better on Win32 using OLE2 and removing the
old codepaths (there are like 3 completely different dnd codepaths in
the Win32 backend, which makes it even more difficult to understand at
first). I got it working for some things but wasn't able to figure out
how to get everything working perfectly. The selection and dnd parts of
gdk are one of the more awkward parts of the API (or maybe I'm just not
smart enough to understand them all well enough).  I don't remember
exactly what I was blocked on anymore, but if anyone wants it I could
clean it up and push the branch to git.

If a new drag-and-drop API is still in the stars at some point, I would
like to help by implementing the Win32 side of it from the start.  Maybe
this would help in ironing out the gtk API too.

/ Cody

On Tue, May 6, 2014, at 05:52 AM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> Its been on my todo list for a while to write an update for the GTK+
> roadmap.
>
> While I couldn't make it to the Developer experience hackfest in
> Berlin myself, the GTK+ team was present there and had a pretty
> extensive roadmap discussion. Thankfully, they took great notes [1]. I
> encourage everybody who is interested in what is planned for the next
> year of GTK+ development to read them, they pretty much cover it all.
> I have now transcribed them into the more task-oriented form of our
> main roadmap page [2].
>
> The big themes on the agenda are
> 1. Closing gaps for modern applications (widgets missing for GNOME HIG
> compliant or Elementary apps)
> 2. Improving our cross-platform story
> 3. Touch support
> 4. Scene graph
> 5. Better developer documentation
> 6. Closer ties with glade
> 7. Cleanups, preparation for 4.0
>
> For 3.14, we're aiming to achieve the following:
> - Merge the gesture branch
> - Add a gtkparasite-lookalike debugging module
> - Make Adwaita the default theme
>
> There are many more details in the notes and on the roadmap page,
> including areas where your help could make a difference. So check it
> out!