[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] GUI builder

[From: Damon Chaplin]

On Wed, 2005-06-29 at 12:33 +0300, Karoliina T. Salminen wrote:
> ext Tommi Komulainen wrote:
> 
> >On Thu, 2005-06-23 at 00:04 +0100, ext Damon Chaplin wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>Hi,
> >>
> >>I noticed that a GUI builder tool is slated for future releases.
> >>
> >>Are you extending glade-2 or glade-3 or starting from scratch?
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >We're extending gazpacho, sorry.  glade-2 couldn't be extended nicely
> >(when evaluation started, we weren't certain whether all widgets will be
> >open) and development had pretty much shifted to glade-3 anyway, which
> >wasn't ready.  Gazpacho seems to have much more momentum, probably
> >because it's implemented in higher level language.
> >  
> >
> I have been using Glade 2.10.0 for my own stuff, it works as long as
> you use standard GTK widgets, but not with hildon widgets.
> In other words, drawing the
> basic UI layout and generating code for that works even
> with Glade. However, I have had to put all hildon widgets in
> by hand allthough in my flight planner software's current version, there
> is only one hildon widget - the file selector (and adding that
> with glade wouldn't have made sense anyway). Doing the hildon
> stuff is largely missing from it, but it doesn't prevent to get started
> with the UI as it works even in the current form in both Scratchbox
> and in the Nokia 770 device. I don't mean that everyone should do
> as I do, but that is the way I have chosen to work since the gazpacho was
> a bit buggy and unmature for me.

Yes, it is quite difficult to know when glade-3 or gazpacho or other GUI
builders will be 100% ready. It turns out to be a lot more complicated
to write a GUI builder than people initially think.

It may be that the quickest way to get a working GUI builder is to use a
custom version of glade-2. It only takes a few hours to add support for
each widget. I am available for hire if you want that done! (Or other
general bug-fixing!)

Damon