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