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diff --git a/INTERNALS b/INTERNALS new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ed3dbae6 --- /dev/null +++ b/INTERNALS @@ -0,0 +1,127 @@ +Glade3 internals +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + + +about this document +=================== + +This is a short description of the designs goals and of the +implementation choices of Glade3. It isn't complete, but +I hope that it may be useful. + + * Note: not only I'm not the original author/designer of + glade3, but also I have not touched glade3 for many months. + +The only reason why I'm writing this doc is that glade3 development +has been stagnating for a long time... now it seems that there are some +developers interested in resuming work on it, so I thought that it was +right to put down some notes on what I remember to ease their way +through the glade3 codebase. + +Everyone who spots errors and inaccuracies in this doc, or who wants to +add informations to it, should feel free to improve it! + + + +1) Introduction +=============== + +As you probably know the idea behind glade and libglade is to serialize +the description of a Gtk+ GUI to an xml file. + + * libglade takes care of reading such file at runtime and generates + the interface + + * glade is a tool to create and edit the desired interface in an easy + way and then automatically serialize it to the xml file. + +Glade3 is a complete rewrite of the original glade and takes advantage +of the introspection properties of the GTK+2 toolkit. + + + +2) Design goals +=============== + +Here are some of the goals which were considered when designing glade3 + + * allow to easily "plug-in" new sets ("catalogs") of GtkWidgets. For + instance the collections of GNOME widgets, which was hardcoded in + glade2, should be provided as an external addition. + In theory all what is required to add support for an extra collection + of widgets is some xml describing the widgets and, if needed, a shared + object which overrides some of the properties of the widgets which + cannot be correctly handled with introspection. [Note: as of this + writing this system is not fully functional and the only catalog + available is the normal GTK+ widget collection] + + * implement full UNDO/REDO for the actions supported by glade + + * implement the glade tools (palette, editor, etc) as widget themselves + so that it would be possible without too much work to embed them in + another program (e.g. an IDE). + + * FIXME: ADD OTHERS + + + +3) File Map +=========== + +Here is a (not complete) list of the source files of glade3, with a brief +explanation of what they do. + +src subdir: + + * main.c - self explanatory, it parses options, loads the available + catalogs and creates the main window + + * glade-project-window.[ch] - the main window of glade, with menus, + toolbar, etc. + The GladeProjectWindow struct also + contains the general state of the program + (e.g. the list of open projects). + There is just one instance of this + structure. + + * glade-palette.[ch] + glade-editor.[ch] + glade-signal-editor.[ch] + glade-clipboard.[ch] + glade-clipboard-view.[ch] + glade-project-view.[ch] - the editing tools offered by glade + + * glade-commands.[ch] - editing actions available in glade. + Implements UNDO/REDO. + + * glade-projects.[ch] - object correspong to each project currently open + in glade, for instance it contains the list of + toplevels widgets and if the project has been + modified. + + * glade-widget.[ch] - probably the most important file: each GtkWidget + in the project has an associated GladeWidget + which contains the name, the properties, the name, + the signals etc. + + * glade-catalog.[ch] - a collection of widget classes + + * glade-widget-class.[ch] - a structure describing each type of widget + in a catalog. + + * FIXME: add the other files + + * glade-gtk.c: this implements the shared object that contains + overridden properties for gtk widget catalog. + + +widgets subdir + + * *.xml: each widget in a catalog has a corresponding xml description. + At some point it may be worth collapse them in just one file + per catalog, at the moment they are split in a file per widget + because at the beginning glade3 required all the properties + to be described in xml, but now only the properties which + need special handling are listed + + |