Notes from GUADEC 2015

1. Roadmap

• Themeing
• GSK
• Undo
• Gestures state (touchpad)

2. Outstanding GLib/GIO issues

• FileMonitor rewrite issues

• GSlice is crashing with lots of threads
  • Reproducer from GNOME Software
  • Replace malloc?
    • Use system malloc everywhere
    • Apps should be able to replace the system malloc (tcmalloc, jemalloc) by themselves
    • Test allocators
  • Signal/property binding groups
    • Written for Builder
    • Set up delayed signal connections/property bindings
    • Deals with signal disconnection

3. CSS nodes update

• Reworked the internal API/implementation
• CSSStyle object (immutable, fully resolved)
• Caching improvements
  • GtkCSSNode API
    • tree-like/CSS-DOM
    • supersedes widget paths when computing the style
    • validation
    • private API at least for 3.18
  • New API for adding more nodes per widget
    • Adds more CSS properties
    • Theme fallout of respecting CSS properties where we didn't
    • Inherited CSS classes
    • Theme designer input/feedback

  • Documentation & stability guarantees

    • Elements/nodes for each widget
    • Composite/complex widgets should probably not guarantee internal relationships
    • Review the use of all style classes, document them, and drop the unnecessary ones
  • Last planned themeing break
  • Drop use of type names and move to per-class identifiers
    • Inheritance of type names complicates the CSS matching

4. GSK

• Separate library
• Core almost nailed down

  • Branch on GitHub because of constant rebasing

  • Will start pushing to git.gnome.org
• Separate library
  • Don't want to overload the GTK namespace
  • Could be a semi-private library in the beginning
• alexl already started reviewing it
• Additional work on top of the core is happening in topic branches
  • GL compositing
  • Animation API
  • Layout management
• Design team should be thinking of animated components for widgets
• First target: out of tree widgets
  • No guarantees of stability like for internal widgets
• CSS transformations?
• Could we rewrite GNOME Shell on top of it?
  • Only if you want to rewrite the whole Shell
  • Also needs a KMS/libinput backend for GDK

5. Undo

• Experimental, currently for GtkEntry

  • applications in the GNOME stack
• Expectations and prior art

• What do we do for GtkTextView?

  • other apps have undo for that
  • opt in/out
• How to display the state of the undo stack
• Undoing text editing is not entirely covered by action-based undo frameworks

  • Private API for GtkEntry only for the time being

6. Gestures (state)

• How close are we to be able to drop non-public internal GDK windows for input?

  • Some widgets need porting, but most widgets already use GtkGestures for pointer/touch/touchpad handling

  • We should put some effort in porting the remaining widgets
• Touchpad gestures should go in before 3.18
  • No settings yet
  • Possible to rush it for 3.18
  • No X11 support (needs a revised XInput 2 extension)

7. Inspector use

• Saving/restore state?
• Display properties that were changed from the inspector with a different style

8. Design patterns/widget requirements

• drop down completion pattern

  • GtkEntryCompletion vs GtkPopover + GtkListBox vs something better

  • touch focus issues
• Combo box replacement

  • wip/combo → wip/ebassi/combo (rebased on master)

• In-app notification

  • Handled similar to popups to avoid additional GtkOverlay

  • Do not specify widgets to attach to
  • API similar to system notification
  • Optional constraint to a specific area of the top-level for widgets with menu/tool bars