Re: Z-ordering

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Wed, 2011-11-02 at 09:22 -0600, D. R. Evans wrote:
> Murray Cumming said the following at 11/02/2011 08:21 AM :
> > On Wed, 2011-11-02 at 08:10 -0600, D. R. Evans wrote:
> >> So can anyone suggest a gtkmm-based library that does know about the
> >> Z-order of overlapping widgets?
> > 
> > I think you can put widgets in a GooCanvas. GooCanvas has z ordering. I
> > have no idea how well that works. I don't personally think that there's
> > much point in widgets in a regular UI overlapping. I can see the point
> > of them overlapping in a very custom canvas-based UI.
> > 
> 
> Well if you don't see the point then perhaps I'm missing something. In a
> system without Z ordering how would you deal with the following situation:
> 
> I have a multi-container widget and a bunch of widgets are visible. Now the
> user presses a particular key combination and a previously-invisible widget
> needs to appear "in front of" an area of the container.

Widgets can never be anything but "in front" of their container. You can
show() and hide() them whenever you like, though of course they will
rearrange themselves when that happens.

>  Some other keypress
> re-hides this widget and restores the view of the multi-container widget.
> Think of it like a pop-up appearing and disappearing -- that's pretty close
> to what has to happen.

For a popup, I would use a secondary Gtk::Window. But I probably don't
understand what you mean.

I do worry that you are trying to use a "Z order" to do with one window
what you would usually do with multiple windows.

> It's perfectly possible that I am still deeply misunderstanding the
> internal model that gtkmm uses for placement and visibility... I find it
> extremely difficult to follow the documentation of the various containers
> and widgets because there doesn't seem to be any thorough explanation of
> gtkmm's internal universe and how that maps to a real screen, so I find
> myself floundering a lot.

-- 
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