Re: Post-22.1 development?

[Jan Djärv]

Richard Stallman skrev:
>     Gmome libraries - If Emacs where to use more Gnome libraries instead of 
> having 
>     its own version of some code (session management, font handling, dialogs, 
>     configuration, themes, widgets, printing), Emacs would benefit 
> automatically 
>     when these libraries are updated.
> 
> To eliminate Emacs's own code is out of the question unless we wanted
> to make Emacs work ONLY with Gnome.  We could make Emacs use Gnome
> facilities optionally, in the cases where it is worth the trouble.
> 
>     - Printing, basically Emacs does not have a "modern" print dialog.
> 
> I find those print dialogs inconvenient if every print operation has
> to use them.  However, it would be nice to be able to use such a
> dialog to do print configuration when one wants to do it.
> 

Usually it is split into two commands, "Print" and Print/Page setup/settings".
 Also is seems that invoking print from the tool bar justs print without
showing any dialog.  What commands we choose to have dialogs or not is of
course up to us.

> How hard is that to implement?

It is some work.  Gtk+ from 2.10 onvards has printing support (ready made
dialogs and such), but the bad news is that the print data is to rendered with
Cairo.  I don't know how hard that is.

> 
>     - Fonts, AA fonts and respecting the fonts selected by the user in his 
> desktop 
>     preferences, including switching fonts on the fly when the user changes 
> his 
>     preferences.  A font dialog chooser is missing.
> 
> Would it make sense to use that font dialog
> to configure faces in Emacs?

Yes, this is quite easy to do.  The only reason it is not in 22.1 is that the
dialog can't filter out non-AA fonts.  Since Emacs 22.1 can't do AA fonts, it
would be confusing to have a dialog where most fonts the user selects doesn't
work.

> 
>     - Session management.  We have that now in 22.1, but Emacs does not 
> restore 
>     the frame layout as it was.
> 
> Could you explain that failure more clearly?

Say I have 2 or more frames when the session exits.  When the session is
started again (i.e. I log in again in Gnome), the frames are not restored,
only one new initial frame is created.

> 
>     Drag and drop - We can't drag text or images from Emacs to another 
> application.
> 
> That is definitely a bug.  Have you implemented this?

Only for text, and only for Gtk+, since there is considerably API support
there.  I don't think images would be very hard in Gtk+ though.  It is a bit
of work to it in pure X11, but not overly much so.

> 
>     Now some of these are being done (AA fonts), some I have patches for 
> (better 
>     theme handling, dnd),
> 
> What aspect of theme handling have you improved?

I can detect if the font changes, but I currently haven't the code to change
the faces, that requires the unicode2 merged in (i.e. AA fonts).  Themes that
changes tool bar icons also changes the corresponding icons in Emacs.  Both
are Gtk+ only.

        Jan D.