Introduction and toolkit abstraction

[Jono Bacon]

Hi,

> Maybe the best solution is simply for someone to sit down and write a 
> library which abstracts common dialog boxes. Most of them have very 
> restricted interfaces (get a colour, show a file dialog with filters XYZ 
> etc) and while you would lose functionality for many projects it may be 
> enough.
> 
> So, you could write a patch for the Gimp to use libdialogkit or 
> whatever, and when the conditions were right it'd go on a separate 
> codepath and use that.

This sounds like the right plan. If we were to begin small and only 
implement core features such as the dialog boxes, this abstraction layer 
can be expanded where needed.

The question is how do we map from one toolkit's dialog box to another? 
Would we literally map arguments from one toolkit to another or is there 
a better way of doing it?

> I don't think there's any magic way to solve this except by special 
> casing applications. Many apps customize the dialog or expect an API 
> that can't be perfectly emulated when implemented in terms of something 
> else.

How do apps customise the dialog other than setting the dialog label and 
  wildcards?

	Jono

-- 
Jono Bacon - http://www.jonobacon.org/
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