Hey Alex,<br><br>For the most part I&#39;d actually be all for the first option... temporary loss of a way of using things that a good number of people probably don&#39;t use is just a temporary set back. However, can you explain how we use &quot;Ability to create a docked dialog using a pixbuf icon.&quot;? Unless there&#39;s something pretty major with that, I vote for solution 1. Also, is gdl on the typical 6-month gtk release cycle?<br>

<br>Cheers,<br>Josh<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 7:10 AM, Alex Valavanis <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:valavanisalex@...400...">valavanisalex@...400...</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">

Hi all,<br>
<br>
To follow up our recent discussions about building against an external<br>
copy of libgdl (<a href="https://launchpad.net/bugs/792115%29." target="_blank">https://launchpad.net/bugs/792115).</a>..<br>
<br>
I have played with the code, and here is a summary of my findings:<br>
<br>
The Inkscape fork of GDL is branched from gdl-0.7.7, which was<br>
released a loooong time ago.  There have been very substantial<br>
upstream changes/bug-fixes since then.  In particular, our version<br>
uses lots of deprecated/obsolete GTK calls, meaning that Inkscape will<br>
fail to build against GTK 3.  We therefore need to fix this issue<br>
fairly quickly.<br>
<br>
Our fork of GDL introduces a couple of new features.  Here are the<br>
main ones I can see:<br>
* Focus switching between docked dialogs, with tab/arrow-key bindings<br>
* Ability to create a docked dialog using a pixbuf icon.<br>
<br>
I have forwarded a patch upstream to GDL<br>
(<a href="https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=652248" target="_blank">https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=652248</a>) asking if they<br>
would be able to merge any of our changes.  The upstream developer was<br>
very supportive and helpful, and had a few queries.  However, I&#39;m not<br>
an expert on GDL/GTK and I&#39;m not in the best position to comment.<br>
<br>
I see three options for fixing the problem:<br>
1) Build against external GDL right away --- This should be easy to<br>
do, but we&#39;d lose our changes for a while.  However, I&#39;m not sure any<br>
of the changes represent essential Inkscape design features and we&#39;d<br>
be able to reimplement them when they appear in the upstream API.<br>
<br>
2) Merge our changes into upstream GDL 2.30 and copy this into the<br>
Inkscape code  ---  This will take a bit of fiddling around, and it<br>
still relies upon us working with forked code.  I have managed to make<br>
a branch of inkscape with gdl-2.3.0+changes that compiles and runs,<br>
but it is buggy (no colour switching and some graphics glitches).<br>
Unfortunately, my GTK knowledge is not good enough for me to do this<br>
by myself.  If anyone is able &amp; willing to help, I can push the new<br>
branch.<br>
<br>
3) Don&#39;t fix it yet! --- Wait until upstream have implemented all the<br>
changes (in GDL &gt;=3.1.1) and then switch over.  However, we have no<br>
guarantee of how long this will take, and we will be unable to support<br>
GDK+ 3 builds until we switch!<br>
<br>
Please let me know what you think!<br>
<br>
AV<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br>