This is the mail archive of the cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com mailing list for the Cygwin XFree86 project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: XWin design suggestion




Biju wrote:
--- Harold L Hunt II <huntharo@msu.edu> wrote:

Sam,

Sam Edge wrote:

Harold L Hunt II <huntharo@msu.edu> wrote in
<3EB5B5D2.4060909@msu.edu>
in gmane.os.cygwin.xfree on Sun, 04 May 2003 20:52:34 -0400:



Yes, I have already thought of that one... and actually started some work on it awhile ago. In fact, my near-term plans for XWin.exe are to add a couple registry settings to remember the position of the Exit confirmation dialog box. If that goes well, it will only be a matter of time until more settings are registry enabled.


I also thought of the issue with the confirmation dialog box.
My current solution, in my windows control panel I changed mouse setting to snap to default button.
Alternate is to show the dialog box near the SysTray or near current mouse position.



Another way to handle this, and I think this may be the Windows standard, is to always center the Exit confirmation box on the screen. I may just implement that.



At first reading I was of the opinion that stuff like this should be
in POSIX-ish configuration files of one sort or another - a
".something" file or directory under each user's $HOME with default
values under /etc - not in the registry under
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/<Organization>/<Application>" and
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/ditto."

On the other hand, I imagine that many people use XWin.exe as a sort
of container application, with everything Cygwin/remote-X-client
"inside" the X session/window(s) and everything Windows-y outside, so
things like the confirmation dialog box are in some sense "outside"
the POSIX realm.

Oh heck. Indecision. Must be the hour of the day and the red wine. ;-D


I have spent a bit of time thinking of the different options here as well. In the end I think that this is a Windows application, not a *NIX application, so it should follow Windows conventions not *NIX conventions. That's the way that I will code it... of course, patches that implement functionality to read a .config file would probably be applied, but I don't think I will be writing that code anytime soon :)


Harold



Using .config file in users $HOME dir we can reduce dependency (so called vendor locking effect)
on MS-Win and also it will be like other *nix program. Saving settings in a file will also make it easy for copying if there is lot of users and/or PC



Okay, let me re-word that for you to see if it makes any sense, "Here at Ford Motor Racing, we would like to use a generic transmission design to prevent vendor lock-in on our cars." Huh... seems kinda dumb. What is the point to avoiding using Windows-specific features when we are building an app that is only for Windows. Occasionally people have tried to sugggest that Cygwin/XFree86 doesn't always have to be Windows only, which just doesn't fit with my vision, primarily because it doesn't make any sense.


So, I am going to have to see a much better reason than avoiding using Windows features for using something other than the registry. Sure, we could use an XML config file... but that introduces another dependency on XML libraries, which I really don't want to have.

Any other ideas?

Harold


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]