[MonoDevelop] Comments on Stetic GU designer

[Richard Hendershot]

I'd be happy if it were possible to manually add gtk.Fixed to the stetic
design.  I tried modifying gui.stetic manually but compilation only
showed that the Fixed class was unresolved.

While I'm familiar with java layout manager classes and I can
conceptually map gtk.Table to BorderLayout one interesting decision
about Stetic is there is no default layout.  Also it seems that there is
no corollary to the flow layout that would allow easily placing multiple
widgets onto a frame.  With Stetic, placing a widget onto a top level
window only allows adding that *one* child.

Javadocs show subclasses but mondocs seemingly make it hard to find
classes that implement high-level concepts.  For example, I look at
gtk.Bin and see Button.  That's mentioned in Remarks but not explicitly
as a subclass, but anyway...  If I add a Bin::Button to the gui
designer, I'm prevented from adding any other kind of control, including
other containers.

I'm sure that latecomers like myself are missing a lot of the design and
tradeoff conversation.  Another issue for me though is I have yet to
find hard crunchy documentation about Stetic itself.  Given Monodevelop
0.11, I had to create a few sample projects, really, just to verify that
GTK was the only place Stetic allowed visual GUI design.  I probably
just missed the place where this was stated, I'm just saying that was my
experience.  Linux.  Older Monodevelop. Upgrade.  Dive In!~

So I probably missed some important things.  A tutorial and a core
Stetic resource would be real helpful at this point.

I agree generally that a fixed layout is probably a bad idea for 95% of
any application, including those you only expect to use for yourself.
The tradeoff is "is it easy using Stetic to modify the UI".  At this
point I have no idea but am excitedly anticipating finding out  ;)

Thanks!
-rsh

On Mon, 2006-06-05 at 09:44 -0500, Tony Caduto wrote:

> JimD wrote:
> > Mario Carrión wrote:
> >   
> >> Currently, that Container isn't shown in the Containers list and it
> >> won't (probally) be due to disadvantages commented earlier, you may
> >> request that feature to Core MonoDevelop developers to add it in future
> >> releases, however I don't support adding that behavior.
> >>
> >> Cheers
> >> ---
> >> Mario Carrión
> >>     
> >
> > Is there a way to add it?  Why can't you let developers make their own
> > choice?  Isn't that part of what Linux and Open Source is about?
> >
> >
> >   
> I agree, if there are core developers reading this, please add the
> fixed container so those of us that are used to win32 development
> can have something that is similar.
> 
> I don't want to hear "You have the source" fix it yourself either, I am
> not a monodevelop hacker and by the time the learning curve is out of
> the way I would have wasted a ton of time, so let's not start the you 
> have the source thing. (I only mention this because every time I have 
> pointed out a shortcoming in a open source project someone will say it)
> 
> I am sorry(not trying to start a flame war) but the whole panel way of 
> building a GUI is not intuitive at all and makes designing a simple GUI 
> a huge pain in the rear. A better solution would be to have 
> anchor/alignment properties or something similar for the fixed panel, so 
> I can make a edit control resize if I want to, that's how it's done in 
> Delphi and VS.net. Also in Delphi I can put a panel and I can set 
> alignment properties if I want stuff to resize automatically, for 
> example I can put a panel and align it to bottom, add a splitter then 
> another panel and align that to client.  The fact that MonoDevelop tries 
> to force the whole panel thing is ridiculous.
> 
> I love Linux and open source, but the development tools available pale 
> in comparison to Delphi or VS.net (Delphi is the best of course :-)  The
> only one that is close right now would be NetBeans 5.x, sorry the
> eclipse GUI builder stinks.
> 
> If Monodevelop is to be a success it needs to be easy to use, think VB 3 
> back in the early 90s.  without a doubt VB 3 is what led to the huge 
> popularity of windows.  The same thing could happen to Gnome and Linux.
> 
> Thanks in advance for listening :-)
> 

-- 
Richard Hendershot <rshendershot at mchsi.com>
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