Re: Gnustep gui and win32 visual styles (theme)

[Michael Hanni]

Folks,

--- Nicolas Roard <nicolas.roard@gmail.com> wrote:

> So when it's done, you can either 1) use the pixmap theme engine to
> create a "windows theme" using pixmaps -- easy and quick, but as
> explained, not perfect -- you can even already start, just grab
> Camaelon and create a theme ! 2) create your own theme engine using
> the extended GSDrawFunctions api, that will use the Windows theme api
> for the drawing -- ideal.

Follow GTK-WIMP here... They extended the GTK+ pixmap theme to use the Windows
drawing functions to draw the relevant pixmaps on the fly. (I believe there is
a gtk+ theme that does this with QT as well.) It looks quite close to the real
thing.

The one problem here, as others have mentioned with GTK-WIMP, is that the
resulting app looks like Windows but a lot of the feel is wrong -- i.e. button
order is wrong, buttons are too big, too small. I think this is where we have a
big hand up with Gorm. You simply load up the gorm file you created on Linux in
windows with Gorm + WinTheme and modify the gorm file to fit the windows HIG.
NeXT knew this back in the day and provided a MyApp-windows.nib (or something
along those lines) with new apps.

Hell, you could have a MyApp-pda.gorm and a MyApp-gnome.gorm (that uses the
GNOME HIG), whatever. Gorm is cool like that.

> After that steps, you'll have a GNUstep AppKit that will _look_ the
> same as Win32. But then you'll have some behaviors that will be
> missing or different. Luckily, you don't need to reinvent the wheel
> here (..or..not entirely), you just need to provide a gui bundle that
> implement what you want. For instance, Menu "in windows" could be
> implemented in two steps:
> - create an horizontal menu (see the WildMenu gui bundle for such a feat)
> - integrate that horizontal menu in the windows, possibly using the
> existing hooks used by NSToolbar

Aie, this is really not hard. Take WildMenus, sprinkle in some updates and some
love, and you can have a horizontal menu in a window. Take a look at
http://u.cc.utah.edu/~msh3/xmas_surprise.png for what I had working last year
after a day of hacking. The biggest issue is this: how do you determine which
windows get a menu bar in them?

If someone wants to pick up the WildMenus code, clean it, love it, and make
this happen I'd be happy to provide input along the way.

> Still, it will be much better to participate in GNUstep,
> because whatever modification that is needed should be included, as
> the hability for GNUstep to "blend in" Windows will very likely
> necessitate the same steps and hooks that the hability of blending in
> KDE or GNOME, so working to have a proper GNUstep integration on
> Windows will in fact be good for everybody.

Couldn't agree more...

Michael