Overview about smart classes/functions etc.

[metzench at ccux-linux.de]

Hi Anders,

thanks for your answer.

> There isn't much developer documentation, there's some user docs
> and that's about it - unless reading the .py source code counts...
> But if you have questions about it, then do put them to the list.
> Now, when you say "our own", does that mean with a diffent layout ?

Different layout, yes this is one thought about that. Don' t misunderstand
this, i really like smart and we are now using it nearly since its
beginning. But the gtk gui ( and so is the qt 3 gui you wrote ) is a
little bit outdated about gui concepts. Most users want something more
fresh and perhaps some more of smarts functions when querying packages.

Well biggest question for the beginning... Which function calls the main
package list that displays in the center of the smart screen? I played
arounf with packageview.py but somehow this whole stuff is really
undocumented and somehow not really logically, especially for me perhaps.

> The way the current graphic interface works is that there is a common
> code, that calls upon a specific "interface" implementation to show it.
>  From your description it sounds like you are writing an external app,
> but Smart doesn't really have an external API - at least not explicitly.

Well, thats right, an external app was the thought, having it integrated
into smarts layout would be fine too, but as far as i see right now it' s
really hard to somehow track this all down because  of this specific
interface implementation thats not really documented in any way. Make it
hard for some external development doesn' t it?


> The qt(3) interface should be more or less done, but the overall idea
> about it is that it should be as similar as possible to the gtk one...

Well understand that, but why not using qt4? As it amkes things really
more lets say fancy for users. And perhaps integrate some more of smarts
basic functions?

> There's also a totally different Qt4 interface to Smart in KPackage,
> which presents its own interface and then makes calls over to smart.

*brr* ever used that? Right now i'm really thinking about going the
wrapper way for a somehow new fashioneed gui, need to investigate this
some more tomorrow.

Regards,
Christian Metzen
CCux Linux Lead Development