[Xfc-dev] Project plans 2007

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Bo Lorentsen wrote:
> Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> 
>>> Any other good ideas ?
>> 
>> How about wrapping libxfce4util, libxfcegui4, and libxfce4panel?
>
> Hmm, I guess I expected this, a libXFCxfce would be natural for a C++ 
> framework hosted on the Xfce site :-) But I need gain some understanding 
>   (and motivation :-)) before doing this.

IIRC, Jeff's original idea was to expand libXFCcore to include
libxfce4util and libXFCgui to include libxfcegui4.  I guess that's up to
you, though.  Wrapping the Xfce libs in a separate library would make it
easier for people to only depend on the core gtk/gdk/glib wrappers if
that's all they want/need.

> How many developers would use this, do you think, and what kind of new 
> applications will this open up for ?

As an Xfce developer, the lack of this is really the only thing that's
keeping me from using XFC at present (frankly, I'm getting sick of
writing GUI stuff in plain C, if for no other reason than all the
redundant typing and inelegant class casts).  I've come to rely on a lot
of the utility stuff in the libxfce* libraries, and using them for a few
purposes (XfceAboutDialog, XfceTitledDialog, etc.) generally makes apps
more "Xfce-ish".

Wrapping libxfce4panel would let people write xfce4-panel plugins in C++
'natively'.

On a side note, I'd like to see XFC to become something more than "just
another gtkmm".  Yes, I'm aware that XFC and gtkmm are designed quite a
bit differently under the hood, and using them can be very different in
certain circumstances... but appearances do matter as well.

>> Perhaps also libexo, libthunar-vfs, and libthunarx?  (Don't bother with
>> libxfce4mcs; hopefully it'll be gone by 4.6.)
> 
> I think I need to understand more about Xfce before I know what this 
> really is.

These are more optional - libthunar-vfs is a file-manager-oriented VFS
layer and libthunarx is a pluggable extension library for thunar.  There
probably aren't too many apps that could/would make use of these.
libexo, however, is designed as more of an app-building utility toolkit
(i.e., of greater scope than the more desktop-component-oriented
libxfce4util/libxfcegui4).

	-brian