[java-gnome-hackers] TextView frustrations

[Andrew C. <an...@op...>]

Well, maybe a quarter of the way into figuring out TextView, I have to
note that I am vastly dissatisfied. 

It's an ugly API. I mean, sure TreeView/TreeModel were complex, but
powerful and you could, once you'd wrapped your mind around it, deal
with that complexity.

TextView/TextBuffer on the other hand, are underwhelming. Whether the
cursor is visible or not is a method on TextView, but placeCursor() is a
method on TextBuffer. Oh, except for placeCursorOnscreen(), which is
back on TextView.

If you want to move a pointer forward you use TextIter's forwardLine().
Unless you want to move it forward a line in the Widget, in which case
it's TextView's forwardDisplayLine(). And so on.

Oh yeah - don't even try to make scrolling work sensibly.

It's all pretty discouraging. With TreeViewColumn/CellRenderer we made a
fairly significant API style change but one which introduced some real
sanity to the family as a whole. I'm pretty pleased with how that worked
out. With TextView/TextBuffer, however, I am at a bit of a loss. It
doesn't feel right. Every time I try to use it to do something it is
either not where I expect it to be or not there at all.

So obviously I am feeling the temptation to "do something about it" but
unlike before it is really not obvious what unifying vision would drive
such a divergence.

Even more  obviously I must be missing something, but without someone
who *knows* GtkTextView *really* well working on this it's been a bit
tough.

        [I already have more than enough to drive what I wrote 4-5 years
        ago, but then I was just displaying text, not manipulating it]

To this point Stefan Prelle has been contributing boat loads, and has
done much of the grunt work. So we're getting there. What's missing is
the big picture

Anyone who has an interest in seeing TextView coverage in java-gnome
would probably be of great help.

There has been a bit of tinkering; changing scroll_to_mark and
scroll_to_iter into a family of scrollTo() overrides seemed to make
sense. It didn't help that it turns out that the real
gtk_text_view_scroll_to_iter() is *busted* and doesn't work for shit.

My work is available on the branch at 'hackers/andrew/textview' branch;
and most of Stefan's contributions are included in there. That branch is
*NOT* anywhere near merge ready, but you can at least tinker with it.
This isn't 'mainline'; API subject to change, etc etc.

AfC
Sydney

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Andrew Frederick Cowie

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