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Re: DirectFB backend, I'm going for it!


From: nicolas
Subject: Re: DirectFB backend, I'm going for it!
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 13:06:29 +0100
User-agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) 3.2.1

Selon Chad Hardin <address@hidden>:

> This email is just an announcement that I'm starting work on a new 
> directfb backend for GNUstep, plus some issues I'd like to bring up.

good !

> About Two:  It seems that there will HAVE to be some type of 
> inter-process communication going on for this, probably 
> NSDistributedNotificationCenter?  The question is then, who will handle 
> this?  Maybe a dock something like Apple's dock which swallows appicons 
> and miniwindows?  I was thinking something along the lines that 
> whenever an app is supposed to create an appIcon and when it's windows 
> are supposed to become miniwindows they instead tell the Dock (or 
> whatever is handling it) to do it instead.
> 
> This would be a big break from current GNUstep L&F, that's why I'm 
> asking about it.  If the idea of an Apple like dock is disturbing to 
> many people, I can set up some type of inter-app negotiation so that 
> they properly place their appicons and miniwindows the GNUstep way, 
> without covering each other up.

In my opinion, the L&F has nothing to do with it. What is needed imho
are distributed notifications for some of the window's actions -- 
iconification comes to mind for example. 
And it's not a problem limited to your DirectFB backend; the problem 
is the same with others backends. For the moment, the only Dock which
works well is the WindowMaker's one, because it deals directly with 
WindowMaker. If we want others well-working docks, we need a cooperation
between the Dock and the window manager or whatever fits that role on
others backends; another (more direct) method to get the needed i
nformations, instead of a window manager cooperation, is effectively 
for gnustep apps to send distributed notifications. It has nothing 
to do with the type of Dock (eg, a NeXT-like dock, an OSX dock, or 
even a panel)...
So what's needed is to identify the different notifications needed and
implement them... two obvious ones are iconification and deiconification,
we could also have one when the program is ready (eg, to be able to
reproduce the bouncing icon of OSX's dock) after launch, and I guess 
another notification could be emitted when the program is terminated.
Others ideas of notifications ? 
BTW that doesn't answers another problem, which is how can we provide
"animated" iconapp -- currently the iconapp is simply a NSWindow and
you could draw in it, but that's doable because WindowMaker's Dock
directly handles the window ...

-- 
Nicolas Roard




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