Re: Can anyone tell me how to make a floating window?

[John Cupitt <john cupitt ng-london org uk>]

Jack Chen wrote:
>    I did what you said yesterday, and got what I wanted with
> gtk_window_set_transient_for(). But I don't know what
> gtk_window_set_type_hint() is for. I checked the gtk reference manual
> and it didn't say what the "hint", which is one of the parameters I
> need to pass, was. Do you mind telling me how to use this function?

It's documented here:

http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gdk/gdk-Windows.html#GdkWindowTypeHint

> that, but there's a new problem. I set the initial floating window's
> position with gtk_window_move(), and set it to be unresizable. And when
> I dragged the left edge to expand it the "whole window" moved to the
> right, and when it moved to the right its left edge wasn't even under
> my mouse. Is it a bug in gtk?

I wouldn't set the position explicitly. It's much better to use something like gtk_window_set_position(GTK_WIN_POS_CENTER_ON_PARENT) to hint what sort of position you would like, and leave it to the user's desktop to set the exact position for you. I'm not sure what's happening with the resizing thing.

There's a note explaining the issues here:

http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/GtkWindow.html#gtk-window-get-size

> Also I've noticed that just like with Gimp, whenever I drag a child
> window across its parent the parent never updates itself, unless I let
> go the left button of my mouse, but that way it looks pretty ugly
> because I can erase my whole parent window by dragging the child window
> around. Do you know the solution for this? I tried to add an idle
> function to make the parent update itself constantly, but it's no use.

I think that only happens on windows, and I think it's been fixed in newer gtks (but the gtkwin list would be a better place to ask).

> Also, do you know a way to create a window that has a border, and a
> title bar with no icon and no max/min/close buttons, and it's actually
> draggable by using its title bar? That is what I want to create for my
> application.

Just experiment with different combinations of WindowTypeHint and _set_decorated(). Because gtk is a cross-platform toolkit, you're unlikely to find a combination which will give exactly what you want in all environments: all you can do is set the hints correctly and hope the users' window manager will do the right thing (most will).

John