Re: some thoughts on the menu framework

>
> Hi everyone!
>
> I am fairly certain that the founding fathers envisaged that the
> different ports of AW would use the same menu layout. It is clear now
> that this is not feasible -- it takes more than using native widgets for
> the application to have a native feel. However, we are left with a menu
> framework that was designed on that assumption, and requires conditional
> compilation to behave as we need it to; I think there might be a case
> for redesigning the framework (after 2.4) to make it more flexible and
> portable.
>
> In particular, I wonder if it would not be good idea for the menu layout
> to be stored in an xml file. I can see several advantages in that:
>
> a) Each platform would have a menu layout that could be tweaked
> independently of the others,
>
> b) It would make it easy to add/remove/change things without having to
> recompile,
>
> c) It would make it possible to tweak the menu layout at the user end.
> For example, it would make it possible for a user who uses AW on two
> different platforms to make AW use the same menu layout on both, or for
> a sysadmin to remove certain menu items.
>
> The only real drawback I can see is if a particular distribution decides
> to ship with its onw menu layout -- it would complicate bug reporting
> and user support.
>
> What do you think?
>

Hi Tomas,
         This makes excellent sense. Actually there is no need to wait
until after 2.4 either.

If a developer has a passion for this, the menu's could be easily defined
in an XML file and sythesized whenever we open a new frame. It's prolly
not more than 200 lines of code.

We already store the entire menu layout in an in-memory array which is
first loaded from another array built during compilation.

(This i how plugins add and subtract menu items.)

It would not be hard to have the in-mempry loaded from an a method in
XAP_App which in turn could be loaded from an XML file on-startup.

I'm not interested in doing this myself but I'm happy to provide pointers
to people who are.

Cheers

Martin

> Tomas
>
>
>
Received on Thu Feb 24 12:22:25 2005