[XForms] Discussion concerning development

[Jens Thoms Toerring]

To subscribers of the xforms list

Hello Jason,

On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 03:17:22PM -0400, Jason Cipriani wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 7:16 AM, Jens Thoms Toerring <jt at toerring.de> wrote:
> I think at this point it may even be save to assume C99 compliance,
> which is now almost a decade in the past.

I wouldn't go that far - as far as I know C99 never did really
get of the ground and there are only very few compilers fully
C99 compliant (even gcc didn't claim to be the last time I did
look). But I also guess that non-C89 compliant compilers are
going to be rather hard to find today;-)

> It seems reasonable to me to assume that anybody using a machine that
> can run XForms is also using a compiler and libc that is less than 20
> years old at this point. It also seems reasonable to assume that
> anybody using a compiler and libc that is *more* than 20 years old has
> more issues to worry about than compiling XForms.

;-)

> > I am rather strongly opposed to arbitrary limits where-
> > ever they can be avoided since todays reasonable limits
> > can be a headache tomorrow ("Who will ever need more than
> > 600kB of memory?") and would try to change the code as far
> > as possible to abvoid them. On the other hand I may not
> > be seeing the complete picture and these limits may have
> > some beneficial effects I am not aware of. Does anybody
> > see some good reasons for keeping them?
> 
> If they are causing problems, no. If they are not causing problems,
> even though it *would* be better to have dynamic upper limits, there
> is also the question of how much work it is to change it. I do not
> know where all the fixed limits are, it has been some time since I dug
> into XForms source.

I am not going to do much about that right now, it was more of
a question if there's some reasonable opposition to that idea.
All I want to make sure is that by removing arbitrary limits I
don't break too many things.

> >   Another point I am not too happy about some of the default
> > looks of XForms. For example I find that the default border
> > width of 3 pixels looks plain ugly...
> 
> I nearly always fl_set_border_width(1) anyway. I also think the
> default look is pretty ugly. The default colors are a little mirky as
> well, but that may just be a personal preference (and also in contrast
> to gnome's brighter default colors) -- I almost always override the
> defaults with fl_set_icm_color() to something brighter. I seem to have
> settled on the following:
> 
> #define UI_COLOR_LIGHT       255, 255, 255
> #define UI_COLOR_LTMID       224, 224, 224
> #define UI_COLOR_MID         202, 202, 202
> #define UI_COLOR_DARK        128, 128, 128
> #define UI_COLOR_DARKER       96,  96,  96
> #define UI_COLOR_INACTIVE     96,  96,  96
> 
>   fl_set_icm_color(FL_TOP_BCOL,    UI_COLOR_LIGHT);
>   fl_set_icm_color(FL_LEFT_BCOL,   UI_COLOR_LIGHT);
>   fl_set_icm_color(FL_MCOL,        UI_COLOR_LTMID);
>   fl_set_icm_color(FL_COL1,        UI_COLOR_MID);
>   fl_set_icm_color(FL_BOTTOM_BCOL, UI_COLOR_DARK);
>   fl_set_icm_color(FL_RIGHT_BCOL,  UI_COLOR_DARK);
>   fl_set_icm_color(FL_DARKER_COL1, UI_COLOR_DARKER);
>   fl_set_icm_color(FL_INACTIVE,    UI_COLOR_INACTIVE);

Yes, default colors are another point! If there's someone
with some graphics design background on the mailing list
recommendations will definitely be appreciated! For the next
pre-release (hopefully coming tomorrow, but there are still
a few issues to be taken care of:-( I am going to set the
default borderwidth to 1 just for the fun of it.

                           Best regards, Jens
-- 
  \   Jens Thoms Toerring  ________      jt at toerring.de
   \_______________________________      http://toerring.de
_______________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send any message to
xforms-leave at bob.usuhs.mil or see: 
http://cweblog.usuhs.mil/mailman/listinfo/xforms
List Archive: http://bob.usuhs.mil/pipermail/xforms and
http://bob.usuhs.mil/mailserv/list-archives/
Development: http://savannah.nongnu.org/files/?group=xforms