some thoughts on the menu framework

Hi everyone!

I am fairly certain that the founding fathers envisaged that the
different ports of AW would use the same menu layout. It is clear now
that this is not feasible -- it takes more than using native widgets for
the application to have a native feel. However, we are left with a menu
framework that was designed on that assumption, and requires conditional
compilation to behave as we need it to; I think there might be a case
for redesigning the framework (after 2.4) to make it more flexible and
portable.

In particular, I wonder if it would not be good idea for the menu layout
to be stored in an xml file. I can see several advantages in that:

a) Each platform would have a menu layout that could be tweaked
independently of the others,

b) It would make it easy to add/remove/change things without having to
recompile,

c) It would make it possible to tweak the menu layout at the user end.
For example, it would make it possible for a user who uses AW on two
different platforms to make AW use the same menu layout on both, or for
a sysadmin to remove certain menu items.

The only real drawback I can see is if a particular distribution decides
to ship with its onw menu layout -- it would complicate bug reporting
and user support.

What do you think?

Tomas
Received on Thu Feb 24 08:52:55 2005