Re: Emacs and Gnome Canvas

[Chong Yidong]

Óscar Fuentes <address@hidden> writes:

> Would that system allow to draw UML diagrams with real graphics, instead
> of ASCII? Would it allow to implement a real graphical view for the DAG
> of a dVCS history? In short, would it a real drawing surface where you
> can draw arbitrary stuff and react to user actions such as the user
> clicking and dragging a line, preferably from Elisp code?

If this is the reason you want to work with Canvas, I don't think it's
necessary to overhaul the Emacs redisplay engine at all.  A better
approach would be to create a system that allows Canvas objects to be
embedded in an Emacs display, in the same way that images can be
embedded.  Thinking of this problem as "replacing" redisplay, or
creating an alternative to redisplay, is unnecessary.

Joakim's patch for embedding gtk widgets is an interesting existing
experiment, somewhat along these lines.