gtk2/TODO.xml
2000-02-26 03:47:25 +00:00

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<!-- This is used to generate the online TODO list for GTK+ using
the script docs/make-todo. Whenever a change to this file is
committed to CVS,the file is run through make-todo and the online
version updated. If you modify this file, you should check for
parse errors by running:
$ docs/make-todo TODO.xml > /dev/null
before committing, or you may screw up the online version -->
<todo logourl="gtk-logo-rgb.gif">
<title>GTK+ TODO list</title>
<section>
<title>GDK</title>
<entry size="medium" status="70%" target="1.4">
<title>Add backing store support</title>
<description>
<p>
GTK+'s drawing model involves clearing to a background, and
then drawing widgets on top of this. Without having
backing-store support, this results in flickering in various
situations. Backing store cannot be added widget-by-widget,
because the drawing in a particular window is not confined
to a single widget. Instead it needs to be added per GDK
window.
</p>
<p>
The way this is done is by having
<tt>gdk_window_begin_paint()</tt>
and <tt>gdk_window_end_paint()</tt> functions that
redirect all drawing to a particular window to an offscreen
pixmap, and then copy that offscreen pixmap back onto the
screen when the paint operation is done. The implementation
of this is mostly complete in the <tt>gtk-no-flicker</tt> branch of
GTK+.
</p>
</description>
<url>http://www.gtk.org/~otaylor/gtk/1.4/gdk-drawing.html</url>
<contact>Owen Taylor &lt;otaylor@redhat.com&gt;</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="medium" status="70%" target="1.4">
<title>32 Bit Coordinates</title>
<description>
<p>
GTK+-1.2 and earlier share X's limitation on the
size of coordinates and restrict all dimensions
to 16 bit quantities. By clever use of X it is
possible to lift this restriction and present a
full 32-bit space to the user.
</p>
<p>
There are some difficulties with performance in this
approach - mostly because scrolling can involve mapping and
unmapping lots of widgets, but in general, current
trials in this area seem to work pretty well.
</p>
</description>
<url>http://www.gtk.org/~otaylor/gtk/1.4/gdk-drawing.html</url>
<contact>Owen Taylor &lt;otaylor@redhat.com&gt;</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="small" status="0%" target="1.4">
<title>Customizable double-click timeout</title>
<description>
<p>
The current fixed double-click timeout in GTK+
is too small for some users. This needs to be
customizable
</p>
</description>
<contact>gtk-devel-list@redhat.com</contact>
<bugs>#3958</bugs>
</entry>
</section>
<section>
<title>Internationalization</title>
<entry size="big" status="0%" target="1.4">
<title>Integrate Pango</title>
<description>
<p>
The purpose of the Pango project is to provide a system for
layout and rendering of internationalized text. It handles
most of the issues necessary to
</p>
</description>
<url>http://www.pango.org</url>
<contact>gtk-i18n-list@redhat.com</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="medium" status="20%" target="1.4">
<title>Switch to using UTF-8</title>
<description>
<p>
This is closely related to Pango integration. Pango deals
with all strings in terms of UTF-8; by switching GTK+ over
to UTF-8 we make it considerably simpler for developers to
support multiple languages properly while still retaining
a large degree of compatibility with existing programs.
</p>
<p>
Some work has already been done on this as part of the Win32
port, since the Win32 port is currently using UTF-8 for all
strings. In general, this should be an easy job; the hardest
parts are places like GtkFileSelection, cut and paste, and
input method support where there is interaction between GTK+
and the operating system.
</p>
</description>
<contact>gtk-i18n-list@redhat.com</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="big" status="0%" target="1.4">
<title>Rewrite Input Method Support</title>
<description>
<p>
Current support for Input Methods is done via XIM, with
supported styles being over-the-spot and the root-window
styles. However, the over-the-spot style is not going to
work well with the Pango integration, since it relies on the
text rendering in the program being done in the standard
Xlib style, so it will be necessary to also support
on-the-spot input. On-the-spot input is done by supplying a
set of callbacks that are invoked by the input methods.
</p>
<p>
While adding the above support, it may be desirable to
generalize the input-method support to the point where
</p>
</description>
<contact>gtk-i18n-list@redhat.com</contact>
</entry>
</section>
<section>
<title>GTK+ Core</title>
<entry size="big" status="5%" target="1.4">
<title>GLib based object and type system</title>
<description>
<p>
The GTK+ object system is already in use in quite a few different
non-GUI applications; it would be desirable for these uses
to have the object and type systems separated from the GUI portions
of GTK+ and be generalized for non-GUI usage.
</p>
</description>
<contact>Tim Janik &lt;timj@gtk.org&gt;</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="big" status="1%" target="1.4">
<title>Overall callback improvements</title>
<description>
<p>
The GTK+ type and signal systems need significant improvements to
allow signal creation with default handlers from language bindings
and to aid language bindings in deriving new objects.
One aspect of this is the Closure support, recently suggested by
Karl Nelson &lt;kenelson@ece.ucdavis.edu&gt;, but this also
requires a GLib based type and parameter system (ties in with
"GLib based object and type system").
</p>
</description>
<contact>gtk-devel-list@redhat.com</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="big" status="0%" target="1.4">
<title>State change notification</title>
<description>
<p>
GTK+ objects emit various types of signals, some to perform
arbitrary actions, some to allow customization from user code,
and some signals are emitted to notify of certain changes
of an object. For the latter, what really is required is a
gneneric signal that can be used to monitor *any* kind of object
changes. For that, all object changes need to be routed through
a central point (otherwise the signal emissions are spread all
over the object implementation), i.e. an object argument setter.
The state change notification signal doesn't need to be emitted
syncronously, in fact, it's probably most effective to always
emit this asynchronously, so subsequent changes are accumulated.
</p>
</description>
<contact>Tim Janik &lt;timj@gtk.org&gt;</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="big" status="5%" target="1.4">
<title>Widget as sensitivity/grab state machine</title>
<description>
<p>
Maintenance of pointer and keybnoard grabs is currently very
tedious and error-prone, most widget's cook up their own stuff
in this regard.
By moving the general concept of "Grabs" to the GTK+ level as
a widget state, and providing a new signal for alterations of
a widget's state ("visible", "visible+insensitive",
"visible+grab", "hidden", "hidden+insensitive", etc.), things
can be unified and more stabelize. A couple of bugs, such as
insensitive widgets still holding a grab, or buttons that
still think they are depressed when hidden, will be squeezed
automatically with that.
</p>
</description>
<contact>Tim Janik &lt;timj@gtk.org&gt;</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="big" status="0%" target="1.4">
<title>Allow argument customization</title>
<description>
<p>
Many types of object arguments (expander style in the CList,
default padding in button boxes, etc), conceptually go with
the theme, or as user preferences; they should not be set by
a particular program.
</p>
<p>
There needs to be a mechanism for themes to be able to
control these arguments from the RC file.
</p>
</description>
</entry>
<entry size="medium" status="0%" target="1.4">
<title>Allow global customization</title>
<description>
<p>
There are a number of global parameters in GTK+ and GDK that should be
customizable by the user, such as the double-click timeout,
or whether widgets should be backing-stored by default.
</p>
<p>
If we had argument customization from an RC file, it might
be possible to do this simply with a global object with
arguments for the various global parameters that was
customized in the same fashion as object arguments.
</p>
</description>
</entry>
<entry size="small" status="0%" target="1.4">
<title>Gtk+ Modules installation directory</title>
<description>
<p>
Gtk+ needs to support an extra lib/ directory, to search
for dynamically loadable modules, it also needs to support
an environment variable to specify module search paths.
This has quite some cross-platform issues with the GModule
code (especially on AIX).
</p>
</description>
<contact>gtk-devel-list@redhat.com</contact>
</entry>
</section>
<section>
<title>GTK+ Widgets</title>
<entry size="small" status="0%" target="1.4">
<title>Make GtkFrame use a label</title>
<description>
<p>
The title of a frame should simply be another child widget
which, by default, holds a label widget. This will important
with Pango where proper text behavior will be more complex to
implement, but is also useful for certain user-interface
designs. (It can be useful, for example, to put a checkbutton
in that slot.)
</p>
</description>
<contact>gtk-devel-list@redhat.com</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="big" status="50%" target="1.4">
<title>Replace GtkText Widget</title>
<description>
<p>
The GtkText widget is badly in need of replacement, since it is
buggy and insufficiently feature rich. There are a number
of possible candidates for a replacement, with the most
promising at the current time being Havoc Pennington's
(hp@redhat.com) port of the Tk Text widget.
</p>
<p>
As part of this job it will be necessary to add
<a href="http://www.pango.org">Pango</a> support to the
replacement. The structure of the Tk text widget port seems
suited to this as it works paragraph-by-paragraph, and
Pango works at a sub-paragraph scale.
</p>
</description>
<contact>gtk-devel-list@redhat.com</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="small" status="0%" target="1.4">
<title>Improve Radio/Checkbutton Look</title>
<description>
<p>
The default look for the radio and checkbuttons is both
unattractive and not friendly to the user . Motif did not
get this one right, and we should not keep on following the
Motif look. The right thing here is probably to copy the
Windows appearance for these controls fairly closely. This
will fit in with well with the rest of the GTK+ look.
</p>
</description>
<contact>gtk-devel-list@redhat.com</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="small" status="0%" target="1.4">
<title>Improve Submenu Navigation</title>
<description>
<p>
Navigating through a deep menu tree in GTK+ is currently
quite tricky, because as soon as one leaves a menu item,
the submenu disappears. The way that the Macintosh is
reputed to handle this is that to pop down the current
submenu, you have to leave the triangle defined by the
upper left hand corner of the menu item and right
side of the submenu.
</p>
</description>
<contact>gtk-devel-list@redhat.com</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="small" status="0%" target="1.4 ?">
<title>Improve Spinbutton Look</title>
<description>
<p>
Spinbuttons currently appear to have lumpy boundaries,
because sides of the arrows aren't at an angle that
meshes well with the pixel grid. However, fixing this
would require making the spinbuttons narrower and
harder to hit. This points out a general problem with
the spinbutton (and the arrows on the scrollbars) - the
target area for clicks actually the bounding box of the
arrows, but the user thinks that they must click on the
arrows themselves. It would probably be more friendly
to use a square button with an arrow drawn on top instead
of a arrow-shaped button, the approach taken by most other
windowing systems.
</p>
</description>
<contact>gtk-devel-list@redhat.com</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="big" status="90%" target="1.4">
<title>Supply horizontable/vertical wrapping boxes</title>
<description>
<p>
An often requested feature are wrapping containers, at this
point, gimp's development version already uses such widgets:
horizontable/vertical wrap boxes, that need to go into 1.4
proper at some point.
</p>
</description>
<contact>Tim Janik &lt;timj@gtk.org&gt;</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="medium" status="90%" target="1.4">
<title>Improved generic combo support</title>
<description>
<p>
Gtk+'s combo box has several drawbacks in design and
implementation. An new attempt at providing the combo box
functionality with improved flexibility has been made with
the GtkClueHunter widget, sitting in the CVS module "gle".
</p>
</description>
<contact>Tim Janik &lt;timj@gtk.org&gt;</contact>
</entry>
<entry size="big" status="0%" target="> 1.4">
<title>Add unified set of List/Tree/Grid widgets</title>
<description>
<p>
Currently, GTK+ has a large number of list and tree widgets
(GtkList, GtkTree, GtkCList, GtkCTree), none of which are
ideal. The GtkList and GtkTree widgets perform badly on large
number of items. (GtkTree widget is also quite buggy.) GtkCList
and GtkCTree mostly solve the size problem, but are quite
complex and, despite that, not very flexible. They are limited to
displaying pixmaps and text, and can neither support arbitrary
widgets nor custom drawing functions.
</p>
<p>
In addition to list and tree widgets, a closely related need
is a sheet widget that displays a (possibly editable) 2-D grid.
It would be desirable to have a complete set of widgets that
could be presented as the one-true-solution for these needs.
Model/View techniques could be used effectively to increase
both the simplicity and power of the interfaces.
</p>
</description>
<contact>gtk-devel-list@redhat.com</contact>
</entry>
</section>
</todo>