Re: Menu (Was: Re: Unimplemented AppKit classes)

[Thomas Cherryhomes]

Quoting Nicola Pero <nicola@brainstorm.co.uk>:

> Ok - thanks for your comments.
> 
> Yes - Renaissance is merging ideas (mostly boxes and autolayout) from
> other toolkits/visual editors.
> 
> If you feel like there is something I could do to make you at least a bit
> more happy with Renaissance let me know. :-)
> 
> As far as I could understand, I think you'd appreciate if I/we
> tested/implemented careful support for non-autolayout sizing and
> positioning of widgets ?  and support for it in the future Renaissance GUI
> editor ?
> 
> You can still go on using the standard Gorm for your interfaces if you so
> wish - I can assure you that support for .gorm formats will remain in the
> gui library - there is *no* reason to remove it (I'll defend it myself if
> needed :-) and in Gorm (that's up to the Gorm maintainers, but they seem
> to be definitely for supporting the .gorm format forever, and I agree with
> them - there is very rarely a good reason to drop useful stuff which
> works).

Thank you for your response, and I have been reading your other responses in the
list, and I am relieved to find that you won't be depreciating things needed by
Gorm to function. 

I think that we'll have to see what happens as to whether the ideas of
Renaissance and Gorm can be brought together somehow. 

Whatever happens with Renaissance, and its editor, we must keep this in mind:

Using a UI to create something else (in this case, the theoretical Renaissance
Editor) should be as natural as possible. In the end, a UI designer cares about
laying out his user interface in as straightforward a manner as possible. There
should always be room for _a_ creative process to take hold, whatever that
creative process might be. If the UI designer needs to spend more time worrying
about the layout of his boxes (if he chooses to do auto-layout) than actually
laying out the visible parts of the user-interface, then the user interface for
the editor is intrusive, and is causing aggregate frustration on the designer.
This frustration can manifest itself in a variety of ways, ranging from a sloppy
final product, to a complete lack of a final product. 

In the end, this is why I love GNUstep, and Gorm so much, because I can spend
more time creating, than wrestling with the environment in order to create. 

my only plea for a Renaissance editor:

PLEASE COMPLETELY DISREGARD GLADE. I BEG YOU ALL. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE
DISREGARD GLADE. IT IS NOT AN EXAMPLE OF HOW TO CREATE AN AUTO-LAYOUT GUI
EDITOR! (Even the GTK+/GNOME people hate it.)

Thank you,

-Thom