Re: question about combo box

[Gus Koppel <gtk spamkiller bytechase cx>]

yeajchao wrote:

>     I  have a question about GtkcomboBox
>     You know,every combobox have a GList which stores
> some optional item.
>     My problem is about the GList.
>     When I click the triangle to pull down the list,
>          and move my mouse to select item,
>          the highlight item didn't change from one
> item to another when my mouse moves from one item to
> another.
>     The thing I want is that: when my mouse is on item
> A,the highlight item is item A; when my mouse is on
> item B,the highlight itme is item B.
>     How can i do that ?

Simple answer: don't just single-click the triangle but keep the mouse
button pressed while moving down over the popup list.

Complex answer: you are referring to some very fundamental GTK+
behaviour. To my knowledge, this behaviour can't be changed easily, not
even by themes. I think there should be a chance to manually highlight
list items when the mouse moves over them (without any mouse button
being pressed) by intercepting certain signals. I haven't tried this and
it's generally not advisable to attempt this, for about 4 reasons:

1. you would need to program this non-standard behaviour for every
   single combobox of your application,
2. the behaviour of other GTK+ applications wouldn't change by this,
3. this different behaviour between your and other GTK+ applications
   would most certainly irritate users,
4. the change in behaviour appears to be so fractional that apparently
   noone else considered a change of the standard behaviour (or even
   complained about it) as yet.

An always open alternative for you would be to (re)write your own
CustomCombobox widget. Then you can implement exactly the behaviour (and
look) you intend. But again, this would most certainly irritate more
people than being regarded a benefit. Not to mention the amount of time
you would have to spend for this.