Re: GtkFrame has no frame border drawn?

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

Hi;

On 10 August 2015 at 14:51, Richard Shann <richard rshann plus com> wrote:

> Having invested effort in this it is exasperating to discover that GTK+
> chooses a default theme that cripples one of the widgets - by failing to
> draw a frame around the contents the user can no longer see clearly what
> is being grouped by the frame.

"Crippling" is a strong word, and one that I don't think applies.

Grouping can be achieved by white space, for instance. Or by changing
the background color. Or by changing the typographical appearance.

Just because you expect a border, it does not mean your expectations
are correct or are the only possible outcome.

For instance, using a border around a GtkFrame has been deprecated in
the GNOME HIG since the 2.x era, almost a decade ago:
https://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/2.32/hig-book.html#controls-frames

The human interface guidelines for MacOS also group controls without a
border: 
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/ControlsView.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000957-CH52-SW8

In general, you want to use your GtkFrame with GTK_SHADOW_NONE, and
use spacing. The documentation of GtkShadowType also specifies that
themes may very well not have different types of shadows, and you
should not rely on them:
https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk3-Standard-Enumerations.html#GtkShadowType

Ciao,
 Emmanuele.