Re: [gtk-list] Re: GTK stability for GIMP 1.0

[Owen Taylor <owt1 cornell edu>]

BOLLIET Jerome <bolliet@in2p3.fr> writes:

> > Other peoples stuff (major things)
> > ----------------------------------
> > 
> > Tree widget:  (Jerome Bolliet)
> >   Works well, though it isn't really general enough, and
> >   suffers the scalability problems of GtkList.
> > 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> What i must do to make gtktree most general and scalable ?
> Have you idea on this ?

The scalability problem is pretty much inherent in the interface
of the tree widget - since it uses a widget for each entry,
the memory and time required to display big trees like a ls -lR
of a filesystem (easily ~20,000 files) or even all usenet newsgroups
is prohibitive. Not to mention the fact that, since it uses
a GDK window as big as the tree, it is limited to being trees
32,768 pixels long)

This is a general problem we need to address after 1.0 - my
personal preference is to rewrite the list, tree, and clist
widgets in terms of a grid widget that either fill cells
on demand or can optionally store just a text string or pixmap
in a cell instead of a full widget.

The alternative is to use something like Raph Levien's Gzw 
widgets, which don't have the 32,768 limit and are somewhat
lighter weight.

As for generality, it would be nice to have a tree widget that
could do multi-column lists, and could display user-selected
pixmaps at the nodes. But these should come fairly easily when
we solve the scalability problems.

Basically, it looked like you've done a good job with the GtkTree
widget, but the origianl design had some fundemental flaws that we'ere
going to have to address eventually.

Regards,
                                        Owen