Re: Design Issues - Getting started with GUI interfaces.

[muppet <scott asofyet org>]

On Nov 3, 2004, at 4:48 PM, Tyler Hepworth wrote:

> On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 16:11:04 -0500 (EST), muppet <scott asofyet org> 
> wrote:
> > basically, you're wanting to replace the contents of some container 
> > with an
> > editor widget for the currently selected row of the tree.
[snip]
> Second, I am not creating an editor.  Perhaps I did not explain myself
> well enough.  Let me see if I can lay out the goal of what I am trying
> to do:
[snip description of a tree on the left and a pane on the right (a 
listview, if i read correctly) allowing the user to see brief details 
of the currently-selected thing on the left]

so it's a typical explorer-like browse-and-details interface.  if 
you're using a TreeView (lists and trees use the same view widget) for 
the list, and all of the things you can select on the left have the 
same properties, you can actually avoid recreating the details widget 
every time, and just recreate the ListStore.  i do that in 
object_browser -- 
http://asofyet.org/muppet/software/gtk2-perl/object_browser-0.006  
(creates several TreeViews in a tabbed notebook, and fills each one's 
model with data related to whatever is selected in the tree on the 
left.)

i said "editor" because it's a very short leap from displaying the 
details to allowing you to modify the details in the same widget, 
especially if you're using a TreeView.  in the past when i've set up 
things like this, i've tried to avoid the need to create another window 
in which to do the editing, as it's a lot of clutter for the user.  if 
you don't want to do that, it's not a problem, you'd use the same 
infrastructure either way.  ;-)


my earlier suggestion still stands; just keep in the toplevel window a 
reference to the container you need to fill.

--
"the ternary operator makes it a bit less ugly."
    -- kaffee