Re: Making widgets visible outside their containing window

[Bill Czermak <billc netspace net au>]

Maybe the answer to your question is simply "No"....  You are displaying 
stuff in your window

Generally the windows manager decides where on the screen to put stuff, 
so you can either use your existing window and allow GTK to display 
things as it thinks fit, which may not be what you expect.  (Note the 
comments about gtk_fixed in the documentation)  or open a new top-level 
window set transient to the main window, which sometimes positions 
things where you expect.  However the window manager decides where to 
put the new window and with dual screens this can be interesting.

Best approach might be to use a (possibly) modal dialog, which the user 
can move out the way if he needs to.  It this is not acceptable, then  
your only choice is to display a complex widget on the main window, 
maybe with a close button to destroy it if apprpriate

Rgds Bill





On 13/07/11 06:57, Sam Spilsbury wrote:
> 2011/7/13 Felix H. Dahlke<fhd ubercode de>:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm fairly new to GTK (using version 2.24), and I'm wondering if I can
> > move a widget (partly) outside the area of a window and still have it
> > displayed.
> >
> > Consider the following code, where I've tried to use a GtkFixed to
> > position a label partly outside the window:
> >
> > ==========
> > int main(int argc, char* argv[])
> > {
> >     gtk_init(&argc,&argv);
> >
> >     GtkWidget* window = gtk_window_new(GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL);
> >     gtk_window_set_default_size(GTK_WINDOW(window), 320, 240);
> >     gtk_container_border_width(GTK_CONTAINER(window), 10);
> >     gtk_widget_show(window);
> >
> >     GtkWidget* fixed = gtk_fixed_new();
> >     gtk_widget_set_has_window(fixed, TRUE); // Doesn't help
> >     gtk_container_add(GTK_CONTAINER(window), fixed);
> >     gtk_widget_show(fixed);
> >
> >     GtkWidget* label = gtk_label_new("Hello World");
> >     // y = 238 should position the label partly outside the window
> >     gtk_fixed_put((GtkFixed*) fixed, label, 0, 238);
> >     gtk_widget_show(label);
> >
> >     gtk_main();
> >     return 0;
> > }
> > ==========
> >
> > This is how I want it to look:
> >
> > -----------------------
> > |                     |
> > |                     |
> > |                     |
> > |                     |
> > |--------------       |
> > -|            |--------
> >   |            |
> >   --------------
> >
> > And this is how it actually looks:
> >
> > -----------------------
> > |                     |
> > |                     |
> > |                     |
> > |--------------       |
> > ||            |       |
> > ||            |       |
> > |--------------       |
> > -----------------------
> >
> > As you can see from the comments, I already tried to use
> > gtk_widget_set_has_window(fixed, TRUE), but it didn't do the
> > trick. How can I do this?
> I can't say I know Gtk+ in any high level of detail, but just using my
> basic knowledge of X11 here, I'd say that gtk_widget_set_has_window
> (fixed, TRUE); is probably only giving the widget a subwindow of the
> toplevel window of your application and not another toplevel window in
> and of itself
>
> If you wanted to have that part of your widget appearing outside of
> the client window you'd need to create a new GtkWindow which is
> override-redirect (I believe the way to do this is to specify
> GTK_WINDOW_POPUP on creation) and set the WM_TRANSIENT_FOR hint to be
> your client's application window. Then you can draw whatever you want
> there and it will be outside of (albeit on top of) the application.
>
> > _______________________________________________
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> > gtk-app-devel-list gnome org
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