Re: Touchscreen support

[Po Lu]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>   > For example, programs in GTK+ aren't supposed to create windows or
>   > widgets manually anymore.  Instead, GTK provides a system to create
>   > "applications", which run in the background and respond to requests to
>   > open files or to display a default window, and it also provides an
>   > XML-based format for describing the layout of widgets and windows.

> 1. You say "anymore", so I wonder what that refers to.  Is this a
> change that was made in GTK+ since we started using it in Emacs?  Do
> you have a rough idea of when that change was made?

It was made a few years ago, but I forgot when precisely.

> 2. Is it possible for Emacs to work with that new method?

Yes, but that would require very large changes.  For instance, Lisp code
wouldn't be able to create frames anymore, that task instead being
delegated to GTK+.

> This is amazing.  Applications are not supposed to support dynamic
> menus at all???

Yes.

> 3. Surely Emacs is not the only system that handles user-defined
> menus.  How do the others work with GTK or with GNOME?

The GTK developers have decided that those applications are undesirable,
so they are not supported anymore.

> Is it possible for an application to submit a new XML file to specify
> modified menus?

Yes, but it's a hack that doesn't work very well (i.e. you cannot define
several kinds of radio buttons) and is slow.  This is why I defined a
custom menu bar widget that tries to imitate the look of the built-in
widget in my (WIP) port of Emacs to GTK 4, instead of working around its
deliberate limitations.

Thanks.