Re: [gtkmm] Tooltips on Toolbuttons

[Chris Vine <chris cvine freeserve co uk>]

On Friday 01 October 2004 07:56, Daniel J. Lauk wrote:

> As the signatures of set_tip are
> <code>
> Gtk::Tooltips::set_tip(Widget& widget, const Glib::ustring& tip_text)
> Gtk::Tooltips::set_tip(Widget& widget, const Glib::ustring& tip_text, const
> Glib::ustring& tip_private)
> </code>
> you can set a tip for any widget not just a tool button, right?
>
> So I want to have tool tips on a lot of things other than tool buttons
> (text boxes, regular buttons, tree view...) and this is why I call this
> function instead.
>
>
> Still I have the problem, that none of the tool tips ever shows up, so
> maybe my approach is wrong.

That is how you do it, so you must have done something else wrong.  This will 
work so as to provide a tooltip for any widget (that is, anything derived 
from Gtk::Widget), such as a Gtk::Button object.

If the things you are dealing with are buttons in a toolbar, a Gtk::Toolbar 
object has it's own in-built tooltips object which you can use to save you 
having to construct your own (in gtkmm-2.4 you can access it with 
Gtk::Toolbar::get_tooltips_object()), although there is nothing to stop you 
constructing your own additional Gtk::Tooltips object and using that instead.  
In gtkmm-2.4 the API for setting a tooltip for a button in the toolbar is 
rather curiously duplicative.  You can either use the 
Gtk::Tooltips::set_tip() method you refer to above on the Gtk::ToolButton 
object (which incidentally is not derived from Gtk::Button but is derived 
from Gtk::ToolItem), or you can use the separate method which Gtk::ToolButton 
inherits from Gtk::ToolItem, namely 
Gtk::ToolItem::set_tooltip(Gtk::Tooltips&, Glib::ustring&, Glib::ustring&).  
Both do the same thing, and in either case you would use 
Gtk::Toolbar::get_tooltips_object() to get the Gtk::Tooltips object.

In gtkmm-2.0/2.2, there is no Gtk::ToolButton class, and you insert standard 
Gtk::Button objects in the toolbar.  You can set the tooltip for the button 
using Gtk::Tooltips::set_tip(), but there is no accessor function for the 
built-in tooltips object contained by the toolbar object.  You either have to 
(i) access the raw GTK+ GtkTooltips object maintained by the GtkToolbar 
struct via Gtk::Toolbar::gobj()->tooltips (this is OK, the tooltips member of 
the _GtkToolbar struct is a public member), (ii) construct your own 
Gtk::Tooltips object and use that, or more likely (iii) you will use the 
Gtk::Toolbar_Helpers::ToolList member functions which enable you to set the 
tooltip text for the button when inserting it in the toolbar.

I prefer the gtkmm-2.0/2.2 API using Gtk::Toolbar_Helpers::ToolList, but this 
is not available in gtkmm-2.4, hence the need to mess about in the way 
described above.

Chris.