Re: Native widgets (was: Re: So, honestly, is GNUStep a viable development option?)

[Nicolas Roard]

On Nov 15, 2007 3:41 PM, Wolfgang Lux <wolfgang.lux@gmail.com> wrote:
> Nicolas Roard wrote:
>
> > It's _far_ from knocking the whole design -- the file dialogs in
> > GNUstep are pretty simple, api-wise and functionality-wise: you just
> > want to call it, and get a list of files. The only advanced feature (a
> > very cool one, mind you) is rarely used if ever (accessory views).
> > Therefore it should be easy to support native file dialogs, and I put
> > forward in my previous emails the advantages of doing so.
>
> Err, sorry, but you probably should have a closer look at the API
> before saying such things. Getting just a file or a list of files
> may be sufficient for simple applications, but there are some more
> advanced uses of the panels, e.g., setting options for a particular
> file type if the file format supports variants (e.g., compression
> algorithm for TIFF files), which is commonly selected with some
> widgets in an accessory view.

Er... yes, and I did write in the quoted paragraph that using native
file chooser would, quite obviously, not support accessory views (at
least, not in the panel itself -- we could imagine popping a panel
containing the accessory view after the choosing is done to the user).

> The panels also support a few useful
> delegate methods (e.g., controlling the visibility of filenames).
> In addition, there is also the treatsFilePackagesAsDirectories
> attribute (which is poorly supported in GNUstep at the moment,
> though).

Didn't say there would be a 1:1 match between what you can do with
NSOpen/SavePanel on gnustep -- but I do believe that most of the
differences are minor and a price worth paying to use the native
widget. As always, it's a matter of tradeoff.
And again, I'm not saying we should ditch our implementation of
NSOpen/SavePanel !
Just that it would be great to provide the choice for the developer to
use native panels _as well_ .

-- 
Nicolas Roard
"La perfection, ce n'est pas quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, c'est
quand il n'y a plus rien à enlever." -- Antoine de St-Exupéry