Re: [AD] OSX - About dialog

[Chris <chris.kcat@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Friday 14 October 2005 04:02 pm, Evert Glebbeek wrote:
> Yes, but that's not the same thing. This is something the OS X does
> automatically: it can show information about your programme.

Yes, but I think the idea of an about dialog (with system-made dialog, if 
possible) warrants making a cross-platform method. The fact that OSX's About 
menu does it for you would just be icing on the cake, as it were.

> Without having *anything* in your own programme to make one?

I never said other platforms wouldn't need to have some user code, and I don't 
see why that's so important. But with a method like I posted before, it would 
be just one line of code to show it.

> 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.

I think it is appropriate for Allegro, as it adds a way to display a short 
snippet of information about the program. Just about all GUI apps I've made 
with Allegro I've had to code my own About dialog, which in turn always uses 
Allegro's GUI instead of any native dialog. I believe games would benefit 
from having such a dialog, too.

> This is different from calling an API function to popup a dialog.

The two mthods can, and perhaps should, be consolidated though. So you have a 
function to popup an about dialog, or you can use OSX's about menu to display 
it as well. I definitely don't think they should be made to use two different 
data sources.

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

Not that I can think of off-hand, but I'm not very proficient on that stuff 
about Windows. I know there's ways you can add extra tabs for comments and 
info in the properties menu when you right-click the file, but it's not the 
same thing.

But now that I think, there probably would be a way to add a context menu 
option when you right-click the program in the taskbar, and add a About... 
option. I've seen other programs add/disable context menu options like that.

> > (or for an Allegro dialog),
>
> We wouldn't use an Allegro dialog for something like this.

For systems that have no other way of dispalying the information, we'd have 
to.

> > 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.

Because there's no way around that. This, however, is a different issue.

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

Quite a drastic one.

> 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).

The HTML files that are put in the start menu are typically documentation, not 
a small little About page.

> > 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.

Which is where the Allegro dialog comes in.

> Because this isn't about your programme showing an about
> box, it's about the OS showing information about your programme.

This is exactly where I think the short-coming of this idea is. It would be 
useful to allow your program to show an about box in a cross-platform way, 
with the extra bonus that platforms capable of it will have let OS show the 
same info.

> > 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.

Note that I'm not saying the about dialog is inconsequential (I said that 
ultimately the program icons were). As I said, I think it's a nice thing to 
have that can be put to good use. But given that it can be useful and put to 
good use, you wouldn't want to lock it into being an OSX-specific thing and 
leave users to roll-their-own to show the same info for other platforms.. 
which is where the show_about_info function comes from, since other systems 
don't do it automatically. Yeah they'd have to put *something* in to call it, 
but this would be a cross-platform method that all platforms benefit from).

> 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.

I don't believe you would. Durring the install process maybe, but definitely 
not the start menu. And you'd want it available durring your program's 
run-time too.

> 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.

If it's the fixbundle script that would put it into the application bundle, 
then the script could be made to take a text file (and html-ize it if 
necessary) and an image file. The same files that the program would use in 
its about dialog.