RE: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

RE: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

[William Gacquer]

I don't care about the GUI colors and so on. By "gnome-compliant", I meant
"D&D-enabled" + a project file in XML ( XMI? ) etc...

I asked that cos I believe that it would be easier to enhance SN by some
kind of gnome-compliant interface. For instance, the include and xref graphs
could be interfaced with DIA, the diagram editor. 

The very best would be to transform SN into a case tool able to treat UML
diagrams. 

Your parsers are clever enough to discover the relations among and between
classes. An XMI import/export would be of great help and a graphical editor
would close the gap between SN and a tool such as Rose (I don't like it) or
Together (better than ever).

I feel ready to implement some kind of UML extension to SN but for that, I
need to leave my current job and find someone (or a company) to pay me for
that. 


William

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Stephens [ mailto:bruce.stephens@messagingdirect.com ]
Sent: mardi 19 septembre 2000 11:57
To: sourcenav@sources.redhat.com
Subject: Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN
Gnome-complian t?


What does "Gnome-compliant" mean to you?  It's written using Tcl/Tk,
so the GUI isn't going to change colours or themes with the rest of
GNOME.  It's also not likely to support drag&drop, be customizable
using the GNOME control center, or to support the GNOME print engine.
(The first is just because Tk doesn't do drag&drop yet; when it does,
things ought to work with Source Navigator.)

Rewriting the GUI wouldn't be an impossible task: by the looks of it,
it's 65K lines or so of Tcl (including comments and so on).  It uses a
bunch of Tcl extensions, but I suspect all the widgets provided by
those are available in GNOME's libraries.

The only interfaces to the rest of the stuff seems to be running
pipelines of parsers into dbimp, and accessing the db-1.85/1.86
databases.  The latter are fairly well documented; I'm not sure about
the former.

-- 
Bruce Stephens			Bruce.Stephens@MessagingDirect.com
MessagingDirect(UK) Ltd		<URL: http://www.MessagingDirect.com/ >

Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-comp lian t?

[Bruce Stephens]

William Gacquer <wgacquer@ubisoft.fr> writes:

> I don't care about the GUI colors and so on. By "gnome-compliant", I
> meant "D&D-enabled" + a project file in XML ( XMI? ) etc...

The project file itself contains lots of information that most tools
won't care about, I think.  Really you want to look at the databases
themselves (the things by default in .snprj).  These are Berkeley db
databases whose contents are fairly well documented.

The harder problem looks like updating the databases should a file be
edited (if you were using this in gIDE or something).  However, that's
probably not too hard either---I just don't know how to do it, except
in outline.

> I asked that cos I believe that it would be easier to enhance SN by
> some kind of gnome-compliant interface. For instance, the include
> and xref graphs could be interfaced with DIA, the diagram editor.

Entirely possible: the databases are pretty easy to read.  They're in
a rather old format, but that probably doesn't matter much (either
link with db-1.86, or change SN to use a more recent db).

[...]

-- 
Bruce Stephens			Bruce.Stephens@MessagingDirect.com
MessagingDirect(UK) Ltd		<URL: http://www.MessagingDirect.com/ >

Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

[Ian Roxborough]

One of the issue with making SN gnome compliant is that we
support a bunch of platform where gnome isn't there or is
buggy at best.

Maybe the preferences should be stored in XML, no sure of
the advantages of the project file being XML.

D&D support would be great, but we'll need to keep it
cross platform (little work, but shouldn't be too hard).

UML would be cool when combined with SN's browsing
capabilities.

Most of these can be done without gnome, but if we could
link to small lib for gnome D&D that should be do able.

As far making the UI gtk compliant, I've found it hard
to justify the effort.  It's doable, I look at how the
themeing stuff works and it could be added to Tk.

Maintain two UIs, one GTK compliant, one for the rest
of the work, just won't fly.

Ian.

William Gacquer wrote:
> 
> I don't care about the GUI colors and so on. By "gnome-compliant", I meant
> "D&D-enabled" + a project file in XML ( XMI? ) etc...
> 
> I asked that cos I believe that it would be easier to enhance SN by some
> kind of gnome-compliant interface. For instance, the include and xref graphs
> could be interfaced with DIA, the diagram editor.
> 
> The very best would be to transform SN into a case tool able to treat UML
> diagrams.
> 
> Your parsers are clever enough to discover the relations among and between
> classes. An XMI import/export would be of great help and a graphical editor
> would close the gap between SN and a tool such as Rose (I don't like it) or
> Together (better than ever).
> 
> I feel ready to implement some kind of UML extension to SN but for that, I
> need to leave my current job and find someone (or a company) to pay me for
> that.
> 
> William
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Stephens [ mailto:bruce.stephens@messagingdirect.com ]
> Sent: mardi 19 septembre 2000 11:57
> To: sourcenav@sources.redhat.com
> Subject: Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN
> Gnome-complian t?
> 
> What does "Gnome-compliant" mean to you?  It's written using Tcl/Tk,
> so the GUI isn't going to change colours or themes with the rest of
> GNOME.  It's also not likely to support drag&drop, be customizable
> using the GNOME control center, or to support the GNOME print engine.
> (The first is just because Tk doesn't do drag&drop yet; when it does,
> things ought to work with Source Navigator.)
> 
> Rewriting the GUI wouldn't be an impossible task: by the looks of it,
> it's 65K lines or so of Tcl (including comments and so on).  It uses a
> bunch of Tcl extensions, but I suspect all the widgets provided by
> those are available in GNOME's libraries.
> 
> The only interfaces to the rest of the stuff seems to be running
> pipelines of parsers into dbimp, and accessing the db-1.85/1.86
> databases.  The latter are fairly well documented; I'm not sure about
> the former.
> 
> --
> Bruce Stephens                  Bruce.Stephens@MessagingDirect.com
> MessagingDirect(UK) Ltd         <URL: http://www.MessagingDirect.com/ >

Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

[Tee Y Teoh]

Ian Roxborough wrote:

> Maintain two UIs, one GTK compliant, one for the rest
> of the work, just won't fly.

What about porting to wxWindows ? wxWindows is support on MS-Windows, Unix/Motif,
Unix/GTK,  and Mac (with work going on for OS/2). wxWindows is  written in C++
and has a Python binding. See http://www.wxwindows.org/ for more info.

Regards

Tee Teoh

Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

[Bruce Stephens]

Tee Y Teoh <tee_yong.teoh@alcatel.com> writes:

> Ian Roxborough wrote:
> 
> > Maintain two UIs, one GTK compliant, one for the rest
> > of the work, just won't fly.
> 
> What about porting to wxWindows ? wxWindows is support on
> MS-Windows, Unix/Motif, Unix/GTK, and Mac (with work going on for
> OS/2). wxWindows is written in C++ and has a Python binding. See
> http://www.wxwindows.org/ for more info.

That might be technically a good thing if one were going to rewrite
the GUI.  I'm guessing it's not going to be a priority for RedHat,
though.  

The current plan looks better: try to remove the specific patches for
Tcl and Tk, and try to remove Tix.  Presumably there are similar plans
for Insight?

-- 
Bruce Stephens			Bruce.Stephens@MessagingDirect.com
MessagingDirect(UK) Ltd		<URL: http://www.MessagingDirect.com/ >

Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-compliant?

[Ben Elliston]

   What about porting to wxWindows ? wxWindows is support on MS-Windows,
   Unix/Motif, Unix/GTK, and Mac (with work going on for OS/2). wxWindows
   is written in C++ and has a Python binding. See
   http://www.wxwindows.org/ for more info.

That sounds like what Tk was supposed to be.  Why not port the Tk iwdgets to
GTK?  If S-N could run under `wish', this would be more feasible.

Ben

RE: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-comp lian t?

[Mo DeJong]

On Tue, 19 Sep 2000, William Gacquer wrote:

> I don't care about the GUI colors and so on. By "gnome-compliant", I meant
> "D&D-enabled" + a project file in XML ( XMI? ) etc...

Well, D&D is something that is being worked on for Tk 8.4, when it
is fixed in Tk it will be fixed in SN. Moving the project file
over to XML would mean we would need to add an XML parser,
it might not be a bad idea but it could be a lot of work.

> I asked that cos I believe that it would be easier to enhance SN by some
> kind of gnome-compliant interface. For instance, the include and xref graphs
> could be interfaced with DIA, the diagram editor.
>
> The very best would be to transform SN into a case tool able to treat UML
> diagrams. 

That would be nice. Of course, someone would need to step up
to the plate and write the code. I don't think we will be doing
it anytime soon.

Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc

Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

[Mo DeJong]

Bruce Stephens Wrote:

Rewriting the GUI wouldn't be an impossible task: by the looks of it,
it's 65K lines or so of Tcl (including comments and so on).  It uses a
bunch of Tcl extensions, but I suspect all the widgets provided by
those are available in GNOME's libraries.

Tee Teoh Wrote:

What about porting to wxWindows ? wxWindows is support on MS-Windows, 
Unix/Motif,
Unix/GTK,  and Mac (with work going on for OS/2). wxWindows is  written 
in C++
and has a Python binding. See http://www.wxwindows.org/ for more info.

Guys,

It would take more than a year to switch SN to a new GUI toolkit.
We would rather spend that time improving SN instead of rewriting
it in gtk or wxWindows. Even if someone did manage to rewrite
everything in gtk or wxWindows, who is going to maintain the
code? Tcl code is really easy to maintain, you don't need to
worry about memory leaks or crashes like you do in C or C++
code (Yuk).

If someone really wants to do a full rewrite, go right ahead.
You have all the code so there is nothing stopping you. I just
think it would better to spend the time improving the existing
code base instead of tossing it all out and starting over. The
GUI is the hard part, parsers and DBs are easy in comparison.

Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc

RE: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

[William Gacquer]

I agree with Mo.
	William

-----Original Message-----
From: Mo DeJong [ mailto:mdejong@cygnus.com ]
Sent: lundi 25 septembre 2000 02:59
To: sourcenav@sources.redhat.com
Subject: Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN
Gnome-complian t?


Bruce Stephens Wrote:

Rewriting the GUI wouldn't be an impossible task: by the looks of it,
it's 65K lines or so of Tcl (including comments and so on).  It uses a
bunch of Tcl extensions, but I suspect all the widgets provided by
those are available in GNOME's libraries.

Tee Teoh Wrote:

What about porting to wxWindows ? wxWindows is support on MS-Windows, 
Unix/Motif,
Unix/GTK,  and Mac (with work going on for OS/2). wxWindows is  written 
in C++
and has a Python binding. See http://www.wxwindows.org/ for more info.

Guys,

It would take more than a year to switch SN to a new GUI toolkit.
We would rather spend that time improving SN instead of rewriting
it in gtk or wxWindows. Even if someone did manage to rewrite
everything in gtk or wxWindows, who is going to maintain the
code? Tcl code is really easy to maintain, you don't need to
worry about memory leaks or crashes like you do in C or C++
code (Yuk).

If someone really wants to do a full rewrite, go right ahead.
You have all the code so there is nothing stopping you. I just
think it would better to spend the time improving the existing
code base instead of tossing it all out and starting over. The
GUI is the hard part, parsers and DBs are easy in comparison.

Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc

RE: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

[William Gacquer]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Roxborough [ mailto:irox@redhat.com ]
> Sent: mardi 19 septembre 2000 16:05
> Cc: sourcenav@sources.redhat.com
> Subject: Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN
> Gnome-complian t?
> 
> 
> 
> What advantages are we going to get from rewritting
> the GUI in wxWindows?

Integration with gtk and/or win32?

> 
> I think that it should be relatively easy to add most
> of the missing feature to Tk.

I am not a Tk expert but I believe in what you said :-)
> 
> One thing that we do plan on doing to remove Tix and
> start using BLT, but this won't happen until after
> the next major release.
> 
> Upgrading the version of Tcl/Tk the SN uses we also
> buy us extra features, I'm hoping that we can do this
> in sync with switch over to BLT.
> 
> Comments?
> 
 iTcl, iTk, Tix, BLT, etc.. that's a lot of extensions....
Nevertheless, I will trust what you'll chose!

>  Ian
> 
> William Gacquer wrote:
> > 
> > Why not? wxWindows has some good extensions. One of them is OGL, the
> > "Objects Graphics Library" that allows to create "Rose-like 
> GUIs" is a few
> > minutes.
> > 
> > But that would require a lot of work to move from TK to 
> wxWindows, even if
> > it's worth the pain.
> > 
> > William
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Tee Y Teoh [ mailto:tee_yong.teoh@alcatel.com ]
> > > Sent: mardi 19 septembre 2000 15:32
> > > Cc: sourcenav@sources.redhat.com
> > > Subject: Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN
> > > Gnome-complian t?
> > >
> > >
> > > Ian Roxborough wrote:
> > >
> > > > Maintain two UIs, one GTK compliant, one for the rest
> > > > of the work, just won't fly.
> > >
> > > What about porting to wxWindows ? wxWindows is support on
> > > MS-Windows, Unix/Motif,
> > > Unix/GTK,  and Mac (with work going on for OS/2). wxWindows
> > > is  written in C++
> > > and has a Python binding. See http://www.wxwindows.org/ 
> for more info.
> > >
> > > Regards
> > >
> > > Tee Teoh
> > >
> 

Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

[Ian Roxborough]

What advantages are we going to get from rewritting
the GUI in wxWindows?

I think that it should be relatively easy to add most
of the missing feature to Tk.

One thing that we do plan on doing to remove Tix and
start using BLT, but this won't happen until after
the next major release.

Upgrading the version of Tcl/Tk the SN uses we also
buy us extra features, I'm hoping that we can do this
in sync with switch over to BLT.

Comments?

 Ian

William Gacquer wrote:
> 
> Why not? wxWindows has some good extensions. One of them is OGL, the
> "Objects Graphics Library" that allows to create "Rose-like GUIs" is a few
> minutes.
> 
> But that would require a lot of work to move from TK to wxWindows, even if
> it's worth the pain.
> 
> William
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Tee Y Teoh [ mailto:tee_yong.teoh@alcatel.com ]
> > Sent: mardi 19 septembre 2000 15:32
> > Cc: sourcenav@sources.redhat.com
> > Subject: Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN
> > Gnome-complian t?
> >
> >
> > Ian Roxborough wrote:
> >
> > > Maintain two UIs, one GTK compliant, one for the rest
> > > of the work, just won't fly.
> >
> > What about porting to wxWindows ? wxWindows is support on
> > MS-Windows, Unix/Motif,
> > Unix/GTK,  and Mac (with work going on for OS/2). wxWindows
> > is  written in C++
> > and has a Python binding. See http://www.wxwindows.org/ for more info.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Tee Teoh
> >

RE: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

[William Gacquer]

Why not? wxWindows has some good extensions. One of them is OGL, the
"Objects Graphics Library" that allows to create "Rose-like GUIs" is a few
minutes.

But that would require a lot of work to move from TK to wxWindows, even if
it's worth the pain.

William



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tee Y Teoh [ mailto:tee_yong.teoh@alcatel.com ]
> Sent: mardi 19 septembre 2000 15:32
> Cc: sourcenav@sources.redhat.com
> Subject: Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN
> Gnome-complian t?
> 
> 
> Ian Roxborough wrote:
> 
> > Maintain two UIs, one GTK compliant, one for the rest
> > of the work, just won't fly.
> 
> What about porting to wxWindows ? wxWindows is support on 
> MS-Windows, Unix/Motif,
> Unix/GTK,  and Mac (with work going on for OS/2). wxWindows 
> is  written in C++
> and has a Python binding. See http://www.wxwindows.org/ for more info.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Tee Teoh
> 

Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

[Florent Pillet]

I don't think this would be such a good idea. It would mean a major rewrite 
of SN from TCL to C (not C++!) and porting anything to C just sounds like a 
bad idea. Too many potential crashes, too many potential problems. If I were 
to rewrite SN, it would be in C++, not in C...

On Tue, 19 Sep 2000, you wrote:

> What does "Gnome-compliant" mean to you?  It's written using Tcl/Tk,
> so the GUI isn't going to change colours or themes with the rest of
> GNOME.  It's also not likely to support drag&drop, be customizable
> using the GNOME control center, or to support the GNOME print engine.
> (The first is just because Tk doesn't do drag&drop yet; when it does,
> things ought to work with Source Navigator.)
>
> Rewriting the GUI wouldn't be an impossible task: by the looks of it,
> it's 65K lines or so of Tcl (including comments and so on).  It uses a
> bunch of Tcl extensions, but I suspect all the widgets provided by
> those are available in GNOME's libraries.
>
> The only interfaces to the rest of the stuff seems to be running
> pipelines of parsers into dbimp, and accessing the db-1.85/1.86
> databases.  The latter are fairly well documented; I'm not sure about
> the former.

-- 
Florent Pillet, Software Architect. e-mail: fpillet@opteway.com
opt[e]way S.A., 2881 route des cretes, BP 308
06906 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
Phone: +33 4 92 95 26 13 - Fax: +33 4 92 95 26 03
http://www.opteway.com/

Re: silly question : how long would it take to make SN Gnome-complian t?

[Bruce Stephens]

What does "Gnome-compliant" mean to you?  It's written using Tcl/Tk,
so the GUI isn't going to change colours or themes with the rest of
GNOME.  It's also not likely to support drag&drop, be customizable
using the GNOME control center, or to support the GNOME print engine.
(The first is just because Tk doesn't do drag&drop yet; when it does,
things ought to work with Source Navigator.)

Rewriting the GUI wouldn't be an impossible task: by the looks of it,
it's 65K lines or so of Tcl (including comments and so on).  It uses a
bunch of Tcl extensions, but I suspect all the widgets provided by
those are available in GNOME's libraries.

The only interfaces to the rest of the stuff seems to be running
pipelines of parsers into dbimp, and accessing the db-1.85/1.86
databases.  The latter are fairly well documented; I'm not sure about
the former.

-- 
Bruce Stephens			Bruce.Stephens@MessagingDirect.com
MessagingDirect(UK) Ltd		<URL: http://www.MessagingDirect.com/ >