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gmodules are your friends

  • March 8, 2004
  • Brian Tarricone

hi all-

i noticed moe commenting about xfdesktop, so i thought i’d give a little status update. the menu code was in a state that i was relatively happy with, so i went and broke it utterly. i’ve noticed people clamoring for keeping things simple and configurable so we can keep the bloat out and the memory footprint low. so, to this end, i’m moving the menu code into a loadable gmodule. this isn’t a plugin system (at least not yet), as each module is going to need to be loaded individually and will proabably have different initialisation and use requirements inside xfdesktop. i think a more generic plugin interface would be nice, but i really don’t see the overwhelming need for one since xfdesktop shouldn’t be doing all that much in my opinion.

currently i have a prototype of the menu code in a gmodule (it only parses menu files and doesn’t do the autogenerated menu yet). it seems to work well so far, with a few bugs i need to work out (that’s what i get for coding at 5am). i’m planning on putting the forthcoming desktop icon code into another gmodule, and if anyone can think of any other cool features that would be candidates as pseudo-plugins, i’d be interested in hearing ideas.

oh, and my new menu code uses XfceAppMenuItem, finally. it seems to work well so far, though porting the menu dentry code to use it will be a challenge since i have to sort the hard way. i’m also planning on adding drag-n-drop support to the menu so you can drag items out onto the panel or onto the desktop. after i finish the menu gmodule i’ll write a panel plugin that can display the desktop menu. ah, modularisation…

i’m really pleased with how xfdesktop is shaping up; in a month or so, hopefully we’ll have a very featureful – but still lean, configurable, fast, and lightweight – desktop manager.