[Glade-users] Making my own Classes

[tvb at gnome.org (Tristan Van Berkom)]

On Mon, 2007-10-15 at 00:44 +0200, Xavier Claessens wrote:
> Hum, I'm not sure it can solve my problem... Here is what I want to
> do:
>
> 1) I create a foo.glade file, the root widget is a GtkVBox, I pack in
> it logs of GTK widgets.
> 2) Manually I rename the root widget class from GtkVBox to EmpathyFoo,
> EmpathyFoo is a class inheriting from GtkVBox implemented in
> libempathy-gtk. 
> 3) Using gtk-builder-convert I convert foo.glade to foo.ui
> 4) I make a method empathy_foo_new(){return
> gtk_builder_get_object(foo.ui, root);} With that function I think
> GtkBuilder will do a g_object_new(empathy_foo_get_type(), NULL); and
> then it will pack all widgets in it as described in the .ui file. If
> that works, glade will introspect my widget, see all packed widgets
> and display me their properties but won't allow me to removed them
> since they are internal childs? 

sigh.

let me try to explain. your widget EmpathyFoo must be a _widget_,
just an object, no glade file, no builder file, just a widget.

Integrating the widget into glade will allow you to add an EmpathyFoo
widget into your project, at that point the user can add children
to it at their leasure (a widget does not load a sub hierarchy
using glade, an application loads a glade hierarchy that contains
your widget at some point in the hierarchy).

Also, your widgets will always be easier to integrate into
glade/builder/bindings if you make sure that normal generic object 
methods work properly; i.e. there is no reason why a widget
must be created with my_foo_new(), an object that responds well
to the gobject api should be able to create itself using construct
properties and a normal constructor.

After you've written a simple catalog for glade, there is no 
bussiness of "s/GtkHBox/EmpathyFoo/" in the glade file... children
of the hbox (i.e. the EmpathyFoo) are specified by the user
and treated like as if the EmpathyFoo were any other hbox.

If the EmpathyFoo widget has internal children, then those
children are created _by EmpathyFoo_ (not specified in a glade
file) however; we can allow users to modify properties on
children that are internal to composite widgets, granted that
the glade catalog plugin module marks those internally created 
widgets as such (and yes, we can even let the user add their
own children to children that are internal to EmpathyFoo).

I have to admit that I am somewhat alarmed by our failure to
understand eachother, please assume that I have no idea what
an EmpathyFoo is supposed to do or look like (so far all I know
is that its some kind of hbox), I wonder if you still have 
problems understanding if you could just try to outline exactly
what you want to accomplish then I can try to tell you how its done.

Cheers,
                       -Tristan