[Freeciv-Dev] Re: idea: a more portable and more beautiful client interface

[Ben Webb <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Marc Strous wrote:

> while strugling with the gtk port to make the client pop up a new window at
> a desired place

        Eurgh. What do you want to do that for? The window manager takes
care of that, surely... You can give it hints with gtk_window_set_position
though.

> why don't we limit all the platform-specific code to display a simple
> window with a single bitmap (plus mouse and keyboard event trapping
> functions) and take care of all the graphics of the bitmap ourselves. This
> bitmap would contain the total graphic user interface of the game

        I can see a few disadvantages with this approach (in addition to
those you give):-

1. It would necessitate writing your own widget set from scratch - and why
   bother, when the GTK/Windows/BeOS/MacOS/whatever people have already
   done that for you?
2. X doesn't much like mucking around with big bitmaps, since you have to
   keep sending them back and forth between client and server (I believe)
3. You'd be making the program harder to use by forcing the user to learn
   a new user interface for Freeciv - why can't they just use the same UI
   they use for 90% of other graphical applications?
4. You'd need a _lot_ of code to get things working properly - look at
   Mozilla for an example!
5. Your idea of "beautiful" almost certainly doesn't match that of a lot
   of other people...
6. If you use your own widgets, you break themes.

BTW, there's no restriction on shape of windows in X; you don't _have_ to
use "square shapes, standard fonts and windows".

        My suggestion would be to go for a cross-platform development
environment instead, like wxWindows, which uses native widgets on each
platform; I believe there's even a MacOS and BeOS port of it
available nowadays.

        Ben
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