Re: Layout Composite Widget Components Using Glade-3? / Pluggable widgets replacement for Glade custom widget?

[Daniel Yek <dyek real com>]

Tristan Van Berkom wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 2:10 AM, Daniel Yek <dyek real com> wrote:
> [...]
>   
> > This is done by installing custom widgets catalog into catalog directory,
> > installing custom plugin libraries, loading optional/custom plugin
> > libraries, installing and loading glade-3 custom widget icons, right?
> >
> > If so, is this not the pluggable widget that I referred to earlier?
>
>   
> Actually no, I think you are getting mixed up the a GtkPlug widget
> is that the case ?

Hi Tristan,

No, I think I got the "pluggable" term from the following Wikipedia 
page. Yeah, the term is probably too confusing to use besides serving as 
a general explanation in the article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glade_Interface_Designer
...Glade-3 codebase is smaller and allows new interesting things, including:
   * Catalogs of "pluggable" widgets. This means that external 
libraries can provide their set of widgets at runtime and Glade will 
detect them.

> If you want to design your composite widget layout in glade,
> that is one thing... but its not a custom widget ;-)

I was referring to my own derived widget that mostly just hold standard 
widgets.
If I interpret it correctly, your comment is mostly restricted to the 
context of Glade, where there is a mechanism to create composite widgets 
that basically look, feel, and mostly behave just like standard containers.

Think about creating a new "GnomeDialog" to be a composite widget. It 
would have to be Glade's custom widget if not "plugged into Glade" with 
catalog and "support plugin", wouldn't it? That was what I was referring 
to when I said "(custom) composite widget".
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/cha-widget.html#Z142

> if you write a catalog for a real widget that you have written,
> a widget in C or another bound language, then you integrate
> it (or only fake it..) right into the glade palette - no need for
> a go between object.

I found this posting to be informative and mostly answered my question:
http://lists.ximian.com/pipermail/glade-users/2007-October/003647.html
http://lists.ximian.com/pipermail/glade-users/2007-October/003648.html

However, the testcatalog.xml in the blog is no longer available:
http://www.gnome.org/~tvb/testcatalog.xml 
<http://www.gnome.org/%7Etvb/testcatalog.xml>
http://blogs.gnome.org/tvb/2007/07/25/some-popular-features/

I am experimenting with the parent-class construct in the attached 
catalog, but not seeing any observable effect or errors (after debugged 
earlier catalog syntax errors.) If successful, do I get a new tool icon 
in Glade-palette?

This is how I start Glade-3:
$ export GLADE_CATALOG_PATH=<directory>
$ glade-3 project.glade


Any idea how I can get started with the approach of creating a composite 
widget in Glade that is basically just a GtkVBox with signal handlers 
custom code hooked up?

I'm using Glade 3.4.4.

Thanks.

--
Daniel Yek.


> Cheers,
> -Tristan