Re: Desktop Guide Shading

["Kevin D. Knerr, Sr." <kknerrsr ptdprolog net>]

On  3 Oct, Elliot Lee wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Kevin D. Knerr, Sr. wrote:
> 
>> On  2 Oct, SoloCDM wrote:
>> > Why I don't know, having a grid over the current viewport area within
>> > a desk-guide doesn't work presently.  How can the shading be changed
>> > (on or off) manually and how can the intensity (darker, lighter,
>> > medium) be changed?
>> 
>> IMHO, some of the relationships between the various GTK widgets are
>> documented a bit poorly. (For example, it turns out that the foreground
>> colors for the GtkMenuShell class are governed by the GtkLabel
>> class--the upshot being that you can't tweak menu text colors without
>> impacting every other text color in the theme.)
> 
> An explanation:
> 
> 	Things like GtkButton & GtkMenuItems are just generic containers that
> 	can hold any other type of widget. The most common case is of
> 	course for them to hold labels, but they can also hold things 
> 	like pixmaps, check boxes, and other random widgets. The text
> 	color therefore has to be set on the label widget, while the
> 	background has to be set on the menu item that holds that label.
> 
> 	(GtkMenuShell is the parent class of GtkMenu and GtkMenuBar, which
> 	both act as containers, usually for GtkMenuItems).

<nod> Thanks, Elliot. I figured there was some level of programming
logic to the situation.

But what was confusing (until I did the widget tree) was that setting
properties for some "container" widgets didn't propagate to their
"obvious" children. IOW it turns out that properties for some "child"
widgets end up superceding properties for "parent" (or more properly,
their containing) widgets. So while setting the bg for GtkMenuShell has
a visible effect, setting the fg does not because the fg is goverened by
GtkMenuItem which is descended from GtkItem.

In short, the parent/child relationships are insufficient to completely
predict the results of setting various properties. What I'd like to see
documented somewhere is a list of the actual "core" widgets whose
properties can essentially supercede those of a parent widget.

So far, it's been a lot of trial & error on my part . . .

Regards,

Barthel
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