Re: [gtkmm] libglademm

[Christer Palm <palm nogui se>]

Quick reply! Thanks a lot!

Murray Cumming Comneon com wrote:
> > From: Christer Palm [mailto:palm nogui se] 
> > I've taken the route of creating my own Gtk::Window objects with a 
> > constructor that looks up the guts of the corresponding window in the 
> > Glade::Xml and reparents it to itself.
>
>
> I've done this in the past, but I believe the get_widget_derived() method in
> libglademm 2.1.0 is the new one-true-way.

OK, I haven't looked at 2.1.0 yet that but it sounds interesting. I'll 
check it out.

> libglademm will give useful warnings at compile time, so I tend to avoid the
> null pointer checks. Nothing is going to work if someone has messed up the
> .glade file. Anyway, an if() is just one line.

Hmm. I guess you mean it gives you a warning at _runtime_? Indeed it 
does. However, IMHO, it is bad programming practice to avoid checking 
pointers just beacuse they "shouldn't" be null. Also, a missing widget 
is not necessarily fatal to the app. I even found it quite useful to 
have this gracefully handled when "fine-tuning" the design in glade.

However, I suppose all that is a matter of taste and programming style 
which, although very interesting, could probably be discussed forever :-)

There's the if(), But I also need to declare a temp variable to hold the 
widget pointer, initialize it, and the signal assignment goes inside the 
if() instead of in the get_widget() expression, so there will be a few 
lines of code. Ideally, I want a mechanism that could encapsulate that 
into a single call. Conceptually, that's the same as the VariablesMap.

> > I got quite disappointed to find out that Glade::VariablesMap, by 
> > design, only works with entry boxes and checkbuttons
>
>
> What else would you like to use it with?

In my settings dialog where I try to use it, I also have OptionMenus 
and TreeViews (although I guess the TreeView might be a bit much to ask 
for). I guess Scales could be useful too.

I suppose I could treat the individual MenuItems of an OptionMenu as 
ToggleButtons, but in this case the choices are mostly built dynamically.

--
Christer Palm