Re: Balloon-help or callout window

[Darryl Luff <darryl snakegully nu>]

Freddie Unpenstein wrote:
> > > I agree about the shaped windws. The actual window is square. The
> > > only non-square bit is he pointer, and that seems to be the
> > > tricky bit.
> >
> > As long as your line is straight you can use shaped windows with
> > a minimal performance hit (just two boxes above and below the
> > line). Since shaped windows are defined by boxes having anything
> > other than a straight line would be prohibited.  Why not just
> > extend tool-tips to have multiple lines?
>
>
> What version of GTK+ are you using that doesn't allow multi-line tooltips?  I never used GTK+ 1.2 tooltips, but the 
> 2.4 version just uses Pango layouts.  In fact a quick hack to detect a <markup> at the start, and call the 
> *_with_markup function, and it even supports marked up text.
I hadn't checked actually, I just hadn't seen a multi-line one. The main 
thing is the pointer line. And maybe a button to close it. The windows 
in KNotes from KDE look pretty good. They are an undecorated window but 
draw their own title and close icon inside the window area.

> I do rather like this idea.  A persistant tooltip that appears off to one side, with lines that connect it to 
> each widget as you move the mouse around, or something...  Would be a wonderful use for the other piece of 
> tooltip text that can be set on widgets, which doesn't appear to actually be used by anything.  Perhaps a 
> derivative of tooltips might be handy, though I'm not sure how much of the code would be reusable.  It 
> doesn't seem to be highly dynamic.
I had two uses for it. One was as a sort of step-by-step tutorial, that 
steps you through a task pointing at the controls, and the other was for 
a warning box that tells you that something is wrong, and points to what 
you need to do to fix it. Ideally you'd pass the 'target' widget as a 
parameter when you created the balloon text window, and it would make 
sure the pointer line tracked it automatically.

> Where a diagonal line isn't possible, you could simply slide the window up and down as required.  In fact, it may even 
> be easier to use two popup windows.  One for the persistant "bubble text" tooltip, and a 1-pixel high window 
> for the line, which you stretch and shorten as needed.
I hadn't thought of a 1-pixel high window. That would probably be the 
easiest solution. Horizontal lines may tend to get lost against window 
borders though. Is there a way to just stop the background drawing in a 
Gtk window? I seem to remember in the dim past using Delphi on Windows 
that if you didn't draw a background, you didn't get one, and the window 
was transparent? Doesn't really apply on X though I suppose.

I haven't tried any code since starting this discussion. Hopefully over 
the weekend I'll get a chance to try out some of the ideas people have 
suggested.


Darryl.