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List:       evms-devel
Subject:    Re: [Evms-devel] status of GTK2 for EVMS
From:       Andrew Schulman <andrex () alumni ! utexas ! net>
Date:       2006-09-18 14:41:26
Message-ID: ctatg2dlu150oqamqg274s7his1kh186ed () 4ax ! com
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> > He looked over some of the earlier patches.  One of his comments was that
> > many of the calls were still to GTK1 style APIs which are deprecated in
> > GTK2.  Don't know how long GTK2 will support the GTK1 APIs.  He also
> > commented that GTK2 has a different style of handling loops and events (I
> > think those are the right terms.  I'm barely a GTK novice.), so the
> > conversion from GTK1 to GTK2 is more that just replacing GTK1 APIs with
> > GTK2 APIs.  You would know more about this than I.

Well thanks for the vote of confidence, but at this point I have to own up
to also being a GTK novice.  So I'll welcome input from more experienced GTK
coders.

In GTK2 I've built just a few sample projects, but I believe I've got the
flavor.  In Windows I've built quite a few GUIs using the bare-metal API,
and GTK seems to me to be very similar to that.  They're both based on
messages (Windows)/signals (GTK), and the most common widgets are basically
the same.

Being new to GTK, at least I won't be trapped in any GTK1 thinking.

> If I could've rewritten the GUI now, I would have separated out more of
> the business logic dealing with how tasks are accomplished (such as
> create a region or resizing a storage object) from the presentation view
> thus hopefully allowing easier ports to another widget library and using
> more common code. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

Good point.  I'll keep it in mind.

> IMHO, a full implementation of a GTK2 GUI for evms would be the best
> avenue and hopefully avoid the hybrid version which looks better but
> still relies on some "old technology". Of course it would be a challenge
> but yield more long-term benefits. 

After thinking it over for a while, I'm inclined to agree.  Best to start
fresh, especially as I'm learning GTK2, rather than cloud things up with the
old GTK1 logic.  Of course the old code would be a key reference.

Also, for the moment I'm not contemplating any redesign of the GUI.  I'm not
an interface designer, just a programmer.  My first goal is just to
replicate the existing GUI in GTK2.  Naturally I'll try to make it as easy
as possible to extend the GUI later, e.g. by adding a new tab for the entity
graphs, or by adding some druids for common tasks, as you suggest.

> And the code would eventually make
> it's way into the evms tree I would hope. 

That's absolutely my goal.  No fork here.

> What would be really exciting for the project would be to develop a new
> UI approach to the same tasks. For example, adding a wizard for novice
> users to deal with simple or common tasks to short cut the generic
> dialogs such as "partition a new disk" in addition to the the more
> generic capabilities. 

This sounds good, but as I said above, I may not be the best person to
design it.

More soon.
Andrew.


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