[bt-devel] Network warning functionality

Eeli Kaikkonen eekaikko at mail.student.oulu.fi
Thu Oct 22 06:40:22 MST 2009


I was hoping to implement a dynamic network warning dialog using the
SWORD library's virtual method. However, it seems to be too complicated.
First, we use threads and it creates problems. UI widgets can be created
and used only from the main application thread. Therefore it's quite
complicated to show a dialog from an installation thread. There are even
more problems because part of our code, namely refreshing the sources,
is non-threaded and works differently and therefore requires different
kind of code.

Second, I can't figure out a way to create UI which has good usability.
I'm sorry to say this but the current BibleCS UI is horrible. You have
to type "yes" with keyboard over and over again. We would of course use
a real GUI, but the SWORD workflow just doesn't fit us. E.g. if you
answer "no" the the question "do you want to continue using network" the
SWORD library lets you do everything but connect to network. This means
that you can select modules and start to install them, but then it just
fails. Maybe it's not completely the library's fault, but the workflow
in our code and UI is so different that it doesn't work well out of the
box.

I suggest that we just show a warning dialog when the Bookshelf Manager
is opened. The user would have possibility to check "Don't show this
again". We then have to make sure the networking code is not initiated
outside the Bookshelf Manager.

Why I want to use a dialog instead of the current embedded warning in
the Install page? Because the embedded warning takes space and is
useless for most users. Additionally it should be duplicated if we want
to create a config dialog page for Installation Sources (I would like to
do that).

  Yours,
	Eeli Kaikkonen (Mr.), Oulu, Finland
	e-mail: eekaikko at mailx.studentx.oulux.fix (with no x)



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