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Mail Archives: geda-user/2015/07/25/14:36:27

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From: Kai-Martin Knaak <kmk AT familieknaak DOT de>
Subject: Re: [geda-user] Docking Property Editors
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2015 20:35:49 +0200
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Edward Hennessy (ehennes AT sbcglobal DOT net) [via 
geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:

> 
>> On Jul 24, 2015, at 10:19 AM, Kai-Martin Knaak
>> <knaak AT iqo DOT uni-hannover DOT de> wrote:
>> 
>> What infrastructure does inkscape use for its docked dialogues?
>> Inkscape is a gtk application which runs fine in windows and apple
>> since ages. And it is pretty popular too.
> 
> The Inkscape configure.ac shows GDL, 

interestingly, the current debian package of inkscape does not seem to 
depend on libgdl:

$ apt-rdepends inkscape | grep libgd
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
  Depends: libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0)
libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0
  Depends: libgdk-pixbuf2.0-common (= 2.31.1-2)
libgdk-pixbuf2.0-common
  Depends: libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0)
  Depends: libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0)
  Depends: libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0)
$

> It also shows a private fork of GDL that is deprecated.

This may be the reason for no "official" dependence in the apt data 
base
 
Again using apt-rdepend I find that only very few packages seem to use 
this library. Actually, there are only two applications in the current 
debian repository which use it: gtranslator and anjuta.

In other words, this lib is hardly used at all. To be fair, anjuta is 
a decent project which will most probably not go a way any time soon. 
But it might decide to switch to a different UI paradigm and leave 
libgdl by the wayside. There is no windows version of anjuta or 
gtranslator. So there is probably no much incentive to make sure, a 
cross compile of this library works out of the box. We have already 
seen how such a constellation might hurt a windows port in the case of 
guile.

Anyway, I installed anjuta to get a feel for how libgdl works. It does  
does a decent job. I was indeed reminded of the docks in inkscape. 
From a user perspective, the inkscape dock are not that great though. 
I remember fighting the UI more than once. It just would not allow me 
to move the parts to where I wanted. In the end I just gave in and let 
the docks stay wherever they happened be by default.

There may be a lesson to be learned: Perhaps the ability to rescale 
and reposition individual docks on the fly does not contribute that 
much to usability. A well chosen default to an offline configurable 
window layout can do the job just fine. (The "job" in this case is to 
get rid of all the overlapping pop-ups) A semi fixed layout would not 
depend on a library or a heroic programming effort with all its 
strings and side effects. 

---<)kaimartin(>--- 

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