[maemo-developers] Community widgets for Fremantle

[From: gary liquid]

there is an lot of very good dialog here :)


On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 9:14 AM, Murray Cumming <murrayc at murrayc.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-09-24 at 08:28 +0200, Cornelius Hald wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > There are some important widgets which are deprecated without a
> > replacement in Fremantle. Those widgets are still available, but they
> > are not fully finger-friendly or don't look good.
>


and this was the kickstart of the whole discussion a few days ago :)
fiferboy came to a section in his program where he needed a font dialog and
we all started talking in irc.


whatever project and choices we organise now would be a hotbed of ideas for
practical usable handheld finger friendly components but at the same time we
must have a rapid and sustainable process to take the best of these ideas
and concentrate efforts in getting stable end developer ready components
quickly in whichever end library we decide.

there is already fragmentation in the standard controls with font handling
especially and this means end users will already have a different experience
depending on the app chosen.

>
> When this is just about regular GTK+ widgets that are not supported on
> Maemo, I'd rather just see the Maemo GTK+ port improved. We don't need
> more unnecessary ifdefs in our applications.
>


the most serious issue I see with that approach is needing to remain fully
and completely API compliant with the standard dialogs - which is where the
developer staying power comes from.
its easy to create new glossy front ends for specific use cases, but to have
a rounded feature complete bug tested component which accounts for all the
standard options and which replicates the subtle bugs usually makes things
difficult.

There is a long history of expansion libraries for GTK, some have lived
longer than others - Hildon stands up as a successful expansion and whilst
we are all aware of its limitations believe the experience and knowledge
that the library has will be invaluable.


I would suggest one thing with any test code we create in garage
to ensure developers do not get the wrong idea, we should not really make it
a library..
just a test app with a palette of test screens and dialogs that can be
worked on
developers should not tie themselves to this initial library and the
temptation will be great and we will get into a mess very quickly and upset
people who pickup the components too early because of buzz about their
utility and impressive attributes ;)

incidentally, there is a colorwheel in standard GTK

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GTK_color_chooser.png

whilst the number boxes themselves are not finger friendly (they could be
replaced with popouts of some kind)
the dialog itself certainly fits within the dimensions.
perhaps taking a look at how that works and whether its usable in Fremantle
would be beneficial.

Gary




>
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> www.murrayc.com
> www.openismus.com
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