Re: box around a GtkLabel

[Tristan Van Berkom <tvb gnome org>]

Wallace Owen wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-03-03 at 17:27 -0500, Zvi Sebrow wrote:
>
> > Wally, 
> >
> > I thought about using a frame,  but i couldnt find a way 
> > change the width of the lines (of the framei), or the color of the lines.
> > Is there a way to do that?
>
>
> If you want your stuff to deviate from the default look and feel of Gtk,
> first rethink (users expectations get perturbed, users get confused,
> users gets angry with you).
>
> Still here?  Check out Themes/Styles:
>
>         http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/GtkStyle.html

With themes, you will be able to modify what a GtkFrame looks like
throughout your application, you can even say what "this GtkFrame"
looks like... but since themes are usually used to give a global
look'n'feel throughout the desktop; its probably not where you want
to define what one particular widget looks like.

If you are implementing some custom part of a UI (i.e. you dont need
the user to mistake that urgent red outline for a GtkFrame component),
I would think that you were initially on the right track with your
drawing primatives etc; you can for example, set a background image on
some container widget (think you'll need to unset the GTK_NO_WINDOW
flag for that container) or do you drawing primatives on it as if
it was a drawing area; in which case you could even query the theme
engine for smart colours to use (a drawing area is just a raw GtkWidget,
you can usually use any widget for the same purpose).

From what I understood from your first original email (that I dont
have lying around anymore); was that you were trying to display a
widget on top of a GtkDrawingArea widget... you just cant do that in
GTK+, there is no such thing as overlapping widgets, period; in your
case (as I mentioned above); you need your background drawable widget
to be the container of the child.

Cheers,
                         -Tristan