Re: GUI programming vs encapsulation

[Andrej Prsa <andrej prsa guest arnes si>]

Hi,

> So how do you guys deal with this problem? I guess there is no real
> way  out of having all the callbacks spread out in this "flat" fashion
> because from the C program's point of view there's no telling in what 
> order they might be called. Is writing unwieldy spaghetti code a 
> necessary part of GUI programming, or have I missed some important
> point?

I'm not sure whether this is also applicable to your problem, but my
general advice would be to keep the program core (whatever your program
really does) 100% distinct from the GUI functions.

Now as your particular question is concerned, I have implemented a
hashed symbol table that holds pointers to all widgets that influence
the core (e.g. all parameters that determine the way your program is
run). Then I have several helper functions that access this table.

An example of a symbol table:

typedef struct symbol
  {
  char   *name;
  double *val; /* change with struct if you need more */
  GtkWidget *widget;
  struct symbol *next;
  } symbol;

symbol *symbol_table[97];

Now when you start your application, hash your parameters, fill up your
global symbol table and you're ready to access your GUI from whatever
source file.

Hope this helps,

Andrej