From Nathan's, Simon's, and Dan's replies, it seems that
both ewl and etk do have mechanisms for allowing app-specific
theme overriding of the toolkit widgets, and in fairly general
ways. Wow.
So, one could write an app, to start with, that uses only
the toolkit themes, and if desired one could then extend this to
allow for further app-specific mods. Best of both worlds.
Ok, could one take say raster's "rage" and do this?
ie. could it be written with ewl/etk to use only (or mostly) the
toolkit widgets/themes and then extend it to duplicate whatever
its current theming? What about the same for say, "entrance"?
Simon writes:
> > In a slightly different vein.. Is there something like the
> > equivalent of e17's modules for the gui-toolkits -- does something
> > like that even make sense?
> I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. You can have loadable
> widgets from a library, but there is no such things as
> "modules" (i.e. plugins that may change the behavior of an Etk
> apps). It may be a good idea, but I don't really see a use for this
> for now.
Well, let's say 'gui-modules' as loadable libs that would
provide additional interesting (but possibly somewhat more specific)
functionality than buttons/menus/... For example, et's say we have
an "rss" feed module, or a "wether/forecast" one, or just a "clock",
... and that these could be embedded in normal toolkit widgets (in
a menu or bar or whatnot).
Nathan writes:
> This seems like a higher level function, like the KParts you mention
> below.
Ummm... Yeah, but possibly something more 'lightweight' would
be good as well.
I just took a quick look at "kparts", this seems to be a
mechanism for allowing functionality that some apps may have to be
shared by others.
It seems to require that 'part' to be given as a loadable
shared lib with certain kinds of interfaces that are known, and
the rest (gui controls) to be specified in an xml file in certain
ways.
This is something that doesn't seem to need a source app
at all, but likely obtained that way from existing ones. It also
seems to me that this kind of thing could be achieved via a
sufficiently extended notion of a 'vfs'.
Anyway... it does seem to be a useful idea.
Simon writes:
> There is something I'd like to discuss here although I'm not sure
> it's really the right place to do so.. Since Etk and Ewl have begun
> to be usable enough, there has been a lot of new apps using one of
> these too. The thing is, too often those apps only copy existing
> apps and I just don't think this the right way. A lot of these apps
> would have been a lot better if they hadn't used a toolkit but if
> they had used directly Edje (and using Etk/Ewl only for the config
> dialogs)...
Ummm.. I know what you're trying to say.. But there are
several sides to this. One is that most people will find it MUCH
easier to use a toolkit, and that seems to me to be the way to start
unless you want a mostly stand-alone app, and are very good with edje.
If e can have nearly as many apps written in its toolkits
as there are now for gtk.. then I'd say that alone would be great
achievement!
If indeed one can extend ewl/etk in the ways you mention,
then one could later optionally extend the theming and/or widgetry
to be as unique as desired - hence allowing for both app-unique
and toolkit-common 'look&feel' for a large number of apps that
people may be inclined to write.
Nathan writes:
> > Much of this looks like a kind of multi-tiered jigsaw-puzzle
> > to me... What is the "big picture" here? And how do the "pieces"
> > fit together?
>
> A puzzle is a fairly good analogy, if you had pieces that overlapped
> one another and some that just didn't exist. :)
>
> At this point, I would say the big picture looks something like
> Trogdor.
Ahhh.... :)
jose.
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