treeview limitations

["N. Volbers" <mithrandir42 web de>]

Hello everyone,

I am using GTK in my application for the plotting of scientific data
[1]. Even though I really like GTK (well, actually its python
bindings), I feel that the TreeView widget has a limitation that
makes it hard to write any kind of application with scientific data,
i.e. data in a tabular/matrix-like form.

Of course it is possible to display such data in a TreeView; however
it is not possible to select anything different than complete rows
from that widget. I know from searching the web that there are
implementations of widgets that allow the selection of columns,
e.g. the sheet widget in gtk-extra [2] or the grid widget [3]. But I
am not very confident in using gtk-extra, which does not compile very
well, has a very unclear web-site and would be an extra (uncommon)
dependency. The gtk grid widget is also no longer maintained [4].

I know that there is a request for such a widget once every few months
on some gtk mailing list, and I know that there is also an entry in
bugzilla [5]. Still I would like to ask you, if anybody is working on
the problem? I am not a C-developer myself, but I could help with
documentation and testing.

Maybe it would be possible to just extend the current Gtk TreeView to
allow arbitrary rectangular selections?

Best regards,

Niklas Volbers.


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[1] http://sloppyplot.berlios.de
[2] http://gtkextra.sourceforge.net/
[3] http://www.sicem.biz/personal/lgs/projects/gtkgrid/view_project
[4] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.gtk+.python/6619
[5] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119085