[haiku-development] BAboutWindow lifecycle
- From: pulkomandy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:55:37 +0200
Hello devs,
I have a problem with the way our BAboutWindow currently behaves. The idea
of the current code is that you create the window on the first call to
App::AboutRequested and show it. Instead of closing, the window is hidden,
so that subsequent calls just show it again.
To do this, the BAboutWindow code overrides QuitRequested to hide the
window and return false (that stops the quitting process). An annoying side
effect is that Application::QuitRequested will not quit the app if a window
returns false from this method.
Moreover, having the window hidden means its BLooper keeps running. This
sounds like wasting more resources that recreating the window if it is
needed again (an unlikely event, you don't usually look at an about window
multiple times). It also is nonstandard behavior, and a trap for the
unsuspecting developers using the class.
This can easily be fixed by letting the window close. Callers in our source
tree can be adjusted to always recreate it. There is a regression in doing
that, however: we also had code to detect an already visible about window
and bring it to the current workspace and/or activating it. I can see no
easy way of doing that if the application does not keep a reference to the
window, and since the window can quit itself, I don't see how the app could
make sure the reference is still valid.
I think a way to solve this is making the about window application-modal.
This will make sure it is above other windows for the app and removes the
need for explicitly activating it in useful cases (you could still manage
to open multiple about windows using hey, but I don't think that's an
actual problem). Having separate about window in different workspaces don't
seem too much of a problem either (or maybe application-modality already
solves that as well ?)
On a final note, I also plan to use BAboutWindow as the default behavior
for BApplication::BAboutRequested, which currently opens a BAlert with just
the application name in it. I think BAboutWindow will show good enough
results (it gets the icon, application name, and other informations from
the app resources).
I wanted to make sure it's ok to do these changes, as it will need
reworking all BAboutWindow users in our source tree. Is everyone ok with
these changes?
--
Adrien.
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