[Bf-committers] layout engine

[Joe Eagar]

There is a reason why we use a native OGL toolkit; it integrates much 
better with everything else.  And it doesn't look ugly, like most 
combination of ogl/native toolkits look.

So for that reason I doubt we'd ever consider an external GUI toolkit.  
We'd have to rewrite all the current widgets in that toolkit anyway; I 
for one will scream if we switch to the crappy spinboxes most toolkits use.

Joe

David Bryant wrote:
>    For Blender to expand future features developers are going to need more 
> screen real estate.That mean a better GUI.The panels idea are great.I agree 
> that the coordinate system for buttons and such are all screwed up and the 
> button alignment code is a little weird but that can be fixed.Blenders UI 
> needs to employ scrolling interface boxes though if it's feature base is 
> going to expand.The problem with panels is that they work well in 
> horizontal and vertical screen layouts if they stay the standard size.But,if 
> you want to expand the UI features of a certain feature that you're 
> coding,you  have to add another panel with the additional buttons for that 
> same feature.Soon you'll have 3 to 4 panels for options concerning only one 
> feature.Scrolling interface boxes will allow coders to expand their UI 
> interfaces within the same feature base and also give room for more feature 
> UI in the future since the UI will become more specialized and streamlined.
>
> I tried to modify the panel code myself and the existing codebase would'nt 
> support such a modification.I needed it to improve my named layer interface 
> with anticipation of adding more layers to Blender.So, I looked into other 
> open source GUI kits to see if I could port.In my study of them all (you 
> name it I've looked at the code and features) GTK and Glade are the best 
> canidates for the job.The only caveat is that developers would have to work 
> on a release with the SOLE objective of porting the new GUI.
>
> So, there you have it.Theres no getting around it.Other high end commercial 
> software developers have spent millions of dollars in research and 
> development to come to this conclusion.Sometimes, it's better to take 
> advantage of the gift you didn't have to pay for.
>
> David Bryant
> "Digikiller" 
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-committers mailing list
> Bf-committers at blender.org
> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>
>