[ruby-gnome-devel-en] Ruby/GNOME2 suggestions

[Paul v. T. <pa...@lu...>]

Hi,

Having been able to use Ruby/GNOME2 for my job, and because of this I &
a colleague ran into some issues and got some ideas.  We wrote them down
and I would like to post them here for discussion, discarding or TODO
purposes.

Gdk
* Let Gdk::Event<type>.new defer to Gdk::Event.new(<type>) with the right type
  (e.g. Gdk::EventExpose.new -> Gtk::Event.new(Gdk::Event::Type::EXPOSE))
  It isn't very Rubyish now, you have to do for example:
  Gdk::EventExpose.new(Gdk::Event::Type::EXPOSE)

Glib2
* GLib::IOChannel#shutdown is missing, but IOChannel#close (that has
  been deprecated) is available.

Gtk2
* Add alias '[]' for Gtk::UIManager#get_widget.
* Add alias 'size_request=' for Gtk::Widget#set_size_request for
  symmetry.
* Gtk::Dialog#run doesn't call it's own destroy when a block was a
  provided.  I would've suspected it to be analogous with File.open
  (if block given, file is closed afterwords automatically, if not,
  you have to do it yourself)
* Can't the TreeModel include Enumerable? This would make it much
  more Rubyish.
* Raise an error for Gtk::UIManager when trying to merge /foo/bar when
  /foo does not exist (this might be a Gtk issue though).
* Trying to retrieve the ID of a Gtk::Plug when Gtk.init has not been
  called leads to a segfault, try: Gtk::Plug.new.id.
  Note that in many more occasions I have encountered that forgetting a
  Gtk.init leads to a segfault.

GStreamer
* Add alias '>>' to Gst::Pad#link for symmetry with Gst::Element#link.
  (This might pose a problem though, because it is not chainable.)
* Add alias [](pad) to Gst::Element#get_pad(pad)
* Alias Gst::Bin#each_element to Gst::Bin#each.
* Add Gst::Element.to_s.
* Gst::Caps#get_structure but no Gst::Caps#structure
* Some inspects of Gst::Pads are shown as #<#<Class:0x.....>>.

It's a pity our time (for the job) was up, I would really have liked to
contribute some stuff, but I am really too busy with a dozen of other
things.
I hope these ideas/suggestions are helpful for the future, if not it's
no bother.  :)

Thanks for the great bindings,

Paul

-- 
Student @ Eindhoven                         | email: pa...@lu...
University of Technology, The Netherlands   | JID: pa...@lu...
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