GTK3 Frame Border - Bug #659926

[richard boaz <ivor boaz gmail com>]

hi,

(I am posting to both GTK lists in the hope that perhaps someone has a work-around for this issue, and if not, then the developers can perhaps comment?)

After some google-reading, it seems that with GTK-3, control of frame decorations has been 100% given over to whatever WM is running whatever theme.  Where this now generally results in GtkFrame widgets having no border whatsoever regardless the setting made by gtk_frame_set_shadow_type().

In my application, I have a 3X3 table of drawing areas.  GTK-2 used GtkTable, and in GTK-3 I have converted this to GtkGrid.

All works fine, except that because GtkFrame now refuses to draw a border, I have no visual separation between my grid cells in GTK-3.

GTK-2 example, using 3X3 GtkTable of drawing areas packed into individual frames with shadow type specified (screenshot of center frame (2,2)):

GTK-3 example, using 3X3 GtkGrid of drawing areas packed into individual frames with shadow type specified (screenshot of center frame (2,2)):

The little white dots are the corners / extents of the center frame / drawing area in question.

My first question to the general list is to wonder if anyone has found a work-around for this.  Investigating the documentation turns up nothing obvious in possible alternatives.

Barring some other way of achieving what's required for my app, I'm dying to know how this evolution of functionality is a good idea.  A bug was reported for this (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=659926) where this has been marked as WONTFIX, since this seems to have been simply given over to the theme engine's own nefarious intent.

But I don't entirely understand this: the above two plots are generated using the same WM on the same box, at exactly the same time, so something has obviously changed between GTK-2 and GTK-3, where program control of how an app's internal widgets must be displayed has simply vanished.

So, how am I supposed to provide a GtkGrid of drawing areas where I'm actually able to distinguish to the user the borders between them?

thanks in advance for any help and / or explanations,

richard