[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.