[Bf-committers] Code "cleanups" in buttons.c
Timo Mihaljov
bf-committers@blender.org
Sun, 23 Feb 2003 13:24:02 +0200
On Sunday 23 February 2003 12:49, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
> Hi Timo,
>
> I think it would help understanding the 'cleaning' you do when you
> start with publishing the concepts of the new GUI, how this will work,
> what the improvements will be, and the optimal migration path.
>
> -Ton-
I don't have a plan for the changes that will be made to the GUI, that's up to
the community and all the developers to discuss and decide. But I _do_ know
that there will be changes to the interface code (after all, there's a
discussion forum for it at
http://www.blender.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpBB2&file=viewforum&f=7)
I'd like to reorganize the interface code using refactoring* to make it more
modular (the "black box" approach), allowing changes to be made to single
parts of the code without having to understand how all the pieces fit
together and also to make it easier to understand and modify. There are many
people who have little or no programming experience but want to make some
tiny changes to the code. With clean code they can do their changes on a high
enough level without having to understand Blender's internals.
This would make the GUI changes easier to do and hopefully make even the more
radical changes (new widget types, sizers, skinning, etc.) possible without
ending up with a bowl of spaghetti code with some nice #blendersauce on the
side :-)
To sum it up: I don't want to change the GUI, I want to make it easier for
anyone to do that. :-)
_noid
* refactoring could be roughly described as improving code in small steps
(refactorings) without changing what the code does. A list of refactorings is
available here: http://www.refactoring.com/catalog/index.html
The nice thing about refactoring is that you can stop after any step, and the
code will still work just like it should be. You could think of it as the
safe alternative to rewriting code.