Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: music widgets
From: rob (rob_AT_kaybee.org)
Date: ma syys 27 1999 - 14:23:22 EDT
On Mon, 27 Sep 1999, David Slomin wrote:
> My only objection is just how are you going to plug them in? How do I
> plug a staff widget written using GTK into a host app written using Qt? In
> my analogy to shell programming, you have stdin, stdout, environment
> variables, and files as standardized methods of communication between the
> "plugins". Just about the only means of communication I can think of
> that's standard across toolkits for widgets is the X clipboard, and even
> that's a little shaky.
assuming that everyone has the libs available for linking, QT in GTK
(or vice-versa) wouldn't be a big problem, although it would look wierd.
the only thing necessary would be some common data conventions, and
dynamic lib hooks. there are lots of problems you could come up with, but
in general, i think such a thing would be nice to have even without a 100%
solution to all problems. again, cut and paste reuse will allow people to
cross these gaps when they like.
> So I prefer the bottom-up approach in general, and the
> language/platform/toolkit (Java) of the host app I'm currently writing
> (Songpad) has strong support for reusable widgets (Beans). However, I'm
> still probably going to end up using the top-down approach because it is
> excruciatingly difficult to design a complex widget to be flexible enough
> for reuse. Designing cripting hooks to be sufficiently flexible is also
> difficult, but not quite as bad, it seems to me.
i think that a middle path can be found, which would provide a little of
the best and worst worlds of either. hopefully, having the widget set
will make it easy enough to design applications that there will be
several allowing the user to choose which approach most closely follows
their own, without having to give up features.
----
Rob Melby
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!gt4255a
Internet: rob_AT_kaybee.org, gt4255a_AT_prism.gatech.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : pe maalis 10 2000 - 07:27:12 EST