[Bf-committers] blender toolkit [Re: blender sub-components]

[Artem Baguinski]

thanks for the reply, Ton

i like to see the "quite difficult" words in the answer ;) i'm not sure
i still want to proceede, but here are some of my thoughts, related to
the issue.

On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 11:40:40AM +0100, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
> It will be quite difficult, but possible. However, you might end up  
> then with a library that is not used by Blender itself. 

that is my main fear actually. there several parts of blender [or of the
future blender] which i'd like to reuse in my own application, GUI
design and real time engine being the most prominent. 

will Blender always remain "everything in one" monolith? i don't mean
the application, but it's code. i would think splitting the code into
more easily reusable pieces could attract other developers to (a) reuse
these pieces (b) contribute to them. the whole source code could still
be kept in one "hierarchical" source tree, and "cvs co blender" would
get it all, but say "cvs co ghost" would only checkout ghost, without
the need for ghost to be separate desynchronized project. 

> Main problem is  
> that the design for the Blender UI doesn't have the target to be useful  
> for other apps, making it easier to include widget elements that use  
> and work on specific Blender data only, assuming the settings are saved  
> in a Blender-like filesystem. Plus, the current state of the code is  
> still 'work in progress', the 2.3x UI project hasn't been finilized yet.

i have to read more source code to decide what i think about that. so
far i rather dislike applications that try to use "universal generic GUI
toolkits" because they don't bring much power to the user. the GUI
elements MUST be problem specific to large extent. and blender is a good
example of how it could be done. 

> >may be i should create WidgetsLiberation project at blender.org ?
> 
> You won't need such a facility until there's an actual team needing CVS  
> and mailing lists. Until then you can best just communicate on  
> proceedings via this mailing list. :)

well, i'm often way to enthusiastic in the evening [when i posted that
proposal ;)] 

-- 
gr{oe|ee}t{en|ings}
artm