Re: [AD] OSX - About dialog

[Evert Glebbeek <eglebbk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> > How do you make Windows pop up a standard about box for an application,
> > without the programme in question having a menu or anything like that?
> 
> The programmer can implement a method themself. Like if they make an 
About... 
> menu with Allegro's GUI, or some command line option, or something.

Yes, but that's not the same thing. This is something the OS X does 
automatically: it can show information about your programme.

> That's not the point. The point is that with this, OSX would now have a 
way to 
> show a spiffy about dialog. However, I'm sure it wouldn't be all the hard 
to 
> make a method for Windows to popup a similar dialog with native widgets.

Without having *anything* in your own programme to make one?
I'm sure there's a way to pop up an about dialog in Windows, or X for that 
matter, that wasn't my point. How do you get it to do that without you 
writing a line of code in your own application?

> But  
> you can't do it the OSX way, so all those programs taking the OSX route 
can't 
> have the same thing on Windows, unless they code a specific non-OSX path.
> 
> > I don't see that there is a cross platform implementation.
> 
> What about that psuedo-code I posted before?

It's *not* the same. It isn't about your programme taking some action to 
display an about dialog box (something I'd hardly consider appropriate for 
a standard function in Allegro), it's about the OS showing that 
information in a natural way.
The same would be, say, right-clicking on the name of your programme in the 
taskbar when it's running and the OS popping up a dialog box showing you 
the about information.

> Just like how looking in the program's directory for a config file was 
DOS's 
> way to do that. There was no extra function/API change needed, it's just 
how 
> it was done.

Different issue. This isn't something where your programme takes an action 
to do something or needs to locate some resources, it's about telling the 
OS where to find them.

> IMO, you should consider other platforms now instead of trying to change 
> things later on.

If I understand correctly, as far as OS X is concerned, there's nothing to 
change later on: it shows an about dialog with the contents of 
credits.html located in the application bundle. That's it. You don't get 
to pass it a string telling it what to display.
This is different from calling an API function to popup a dialog.

> API breakage isn't my concern. My concern is supporting this now, and 
then 
> later when you want to add similar boxes for other platforms you hit a 
snag.. 
> the inability to parse HTML for a Windows dialog

Does Windows have a standard way to do this (without having a menu bar for 
the programme)?

> (or for an Allegro dialog),  

We wouldn't use an Allegro dialog for something like this.

> which causes you to now have to do it two different ways to do basically 
the 
> same thing on multiple platforms.

... much as we do for icons.

> Except the screenshot Peter posted had it (along with a seperate image) 
in a 
> system dialog box, not a web browser.

Differences between platforms.

> It wouldn't be nice for other systems  
> to have to open up a web browser to see it (and miss the iamge).

It's what you have to do in Windows anyway to see those html files that get 
put in the start menu with programmes (if it's still done that way, I 
actually wouldn't know).

> Nor would it  
> work for Unix/X where you can't gaurantee it to run a web browser when 
you 
> give it a html file.

Note that I didn't mention UNIX, for more or less this reason. Besides, the 
notion of an `about...' box, shown by the OS, in a UNIX system is ill 
defined in my opinion. The best analogue I can think of is typing 
something like `info mygame' and getting the requested information.
Maybe there's a standard way to do it for KDE or GNOME applications, but 
that's irrelevant since Allegro programmes are neither.

> And for systems that wouldn't be able to popup a system  
> dialog, or run a concurrent process, they'd need to use an Allegro 
dialog, 
> which can't do HTML, to show it.

No, they don't. Because this isn't about your programme showing an about 
box, it's about the OS showing information about your programme.

The real issue, I think, is that we don't have something akin to a `bundle' 
on Windows; a programme that comes with Allegro that can be used to 
install Allegro programmes on other Windows computers.

> I would say, no.

Well, I don't have an opinion either way (though I'm playing devil's 
advocate), so let's hear the yes or no from Mac people on this one.
It's easy to dismiss something as inconsequential if you don't use the 
platform yourself.

> The about dialog, IMO, is something the program can use to  
> display a short little something about itself. Perhaps to show some 
credits 
> and contact information, too. The icon for Windows executables is 
ultimately 
> inconsequential. It's just a neat little thing to help pretty-up the file 
in 
> a file browser or the program in the taskbar.. where as the About dialog 
can 
> show some pretty important credit or contact information.

But in Windows, you'd place that information in a file in the start menu 
with your programme, or show it during the installation process. But 
there's no way to ask Windows about your programme.

> The thing with icons is, AFAIK, that they have to be compiled into the 
> program, as well that Windows and X11 both had different methods of doing 
> this and supported different image formats. There was no way to get 
around 
> that so it inherently needed system specific methods. This is unlike an 
About 
> dialog which can be constructed manually at run time.

Except that in this case, the information has to go into the application 
bundle. To my understanding, that isn't the same as compiling it in but 
should be treated similarly for all intent and purpose.

> Is there a way for someone to enable the About dialog from their own 
code? 
> What happens if there's no image or text/html file?

Pete?

Evert