Re: why do constructors return GtkWidget?

[Thomas Stover <thomas wsinnovations com>]

> Tristan Van Berkom wrote:
>   
> > On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 2:53 AM, Emmanuel
> > Touzery<emmanuel touzery free fr> wrote:
> >   
> >     
> > > Hi,
> > >     
> > >       
> > [...]
> >   
> >     
> > > You know what I'm thinking... I think that this is from times where people
> > > used to build GUIs in the code... When they were writing all the container
> > > embedding and all, in C, building their dialogs. At that time that
> > > convention surely helped, you were constantly adding widgets to containers
> > > and so on. Today this is done in gtkbuilder and so what we have left is code
> > > not doing so much embedding in code (though obviously it happens) but
> > >     
> > >       
> > Yes I would say its a historical thing, and I certainly hope that using
> > GtkBuilder can be the standard in the end (I guess we still have lots of
> > ground to cover).
> >   
> >     
> Only over my dead body ;-)
>
> Carlos
>   
> > Cheers,
> >            -Tristan
Indeed. Not building interfaces manually may save time now and then, but 
it hinders your understanding of what is happening. For instance when 
you want to dynamically make interface changes at run time your left 
with simple hide & show tricks. I can remember more than once when I 
wanted to tweak someone else's UI so as to do something like add a 
button that breaks out some widgets into a new window or adds some more 
widget filled h/vboxes in the mix, only to start looking at the code and 
see no code. Simple things become intrusive. Using helper tools is fine 
and wonderful, just don't strive for oversimplifying everyone else's world.