Re: Prefs

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, James K. Lowden wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Mar 2003 09:45:45 -0600, Lars Clausen <lrclause@cs.uiuc.edu>
> wrote:
>> Externally defined -- the dialog is designed with Glade and somehow (I'm
>> not sure how that'd be the easiest) connected with the prefs structure.
>> Pro:  More exact design possible.  Con:  Harder to maintain.
> 
> I'm going to posit a radical tastes-great-less-filling hypothesis: More
> exact design possible and easier to maintain.  :-)
> 
> I mean only that we can't know yet.  I haven't generated the glade code
> yet [1], and it's not clear how easy it is to maintain the uninteresting
> glade<->dia data moving code.  I'm willing to design a new dialog and
> write said code, and let you be the judge about what's easier or harder. 
> After all, you're familiar with stdprops and I'm not, so you'll be in a
> position to judge.  I trust that we won't be subject to NIH; the better
> approach will carry the day.  

Yay!  Design contest!  Cyrille, do you want to do the pseudo-object style?
I want to do the direct props/offset-style.

> FWIW, I think the population of people willing to diddle with Glade and
> write some pretty easy code is bigger than those willing to master
> stdprops.  Not that I think that's the determining factor, but it's not
> nothing, either.  

Diddling with Glade code, yes.  But dealing with the underlying connection
to Dia?  That's where it gets tough.

Especially when we want to have the prefs influence each other.  For
instance, when you turn Visible Grid off, the grid size and color should be
ghosted. 

> I'm a Larry Wall kind of lazy programmer; if there's an easy way to do
> this, you can depend on me to find it.  

Me too.  In this case, I'm not sure which is the easier way.  And in
particular, I'm not sure which will save me (us) the most work in the
future.

> [1]  I'm having a time getting Glade2 installed, whence the delay.  The
> GTK2 dependency tree is not a joy to behold.  

Not a problem on Debian.  Glade2 is indeed very nice, except I can't get a
treeview to be tree-like.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| HĂ„rdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?