[cells-gtk-devel] Re: [cells-devel] Patch for "cells-tree-view" (the result of the family-observer discussion)

[Peter Hildebrandt]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:53:58 +0100, Ken Tilton <kennytilton at optonline.net>  
wrote:

> Peter Hildebrandt wrote:
>>  I wrote a patch to add editable cells to the tree-view widgets.  It  
>> adds  editing to the existing treebox/listbox, and moreover it provides  
>> the new  cells-tree-view, which keeps a tree-view in sync with a cells  
>> family  tree.
>
> Wow, you have been busy. Congrats on pulling this off.

Thanks :-)  Your suggestions definitely got me on the right track there.

The hairy part in the end was to get the hooks into the right places so  
that gtk is called at the right moment.  It turned out :default-initargs  
is the best place to construct gtk objects, and the latter part of an  
:around method for not-to-be is where it should be destroyed.

I did quite a bit of stress testing (the threading part helps here, I can  
just run a few loops from the repl, consing family trees together and  
ripping them apart and watch gtk trying to catch up), and could not manage  
to break it.

This makes me wonder once more what GUI toolkits people really use.  Since  
it's so easy, does everyone just roll their own (like you, for that  
matter)?  Or is there some good standard library out there that I have  
missed in my search?  Or do Franz and Allegro offer superior toolkits with  
their products?  Or is it just that most people use lisp for stuff that  
does not require GUIs (i.e. (academic) command line tools/web apps)?   
Maybe I'll kick off another one of these threads on cll (the last one is  
almost two years old, I think).

Anyway, Happy Holidays everyone,

Peter


> kt