Actually, Jonas, there is something like that in Gtkmm. Alan understand what I have explained, and this is what we are working on.
I appreciate your description to me about how complicated it is, and your advise to me that it might be too complicated for me to handle... and of course, that is the problem.
First. I don't think it's that complicated. I just can't do it because currently I don't know how to. Once I know how, it'll be a very simple matter. I believe it's a simple matter for Alan, and I'm sure, later today he and I will fix up the missing links in my crude code.
I believe, as I described below, the problem is lack of description in the documentation and example url that I linked below. I'm sure it's covered in the documentation, but not as an example. Hopefully the developers will fix this oversight in the example link. Then the next person who wants to simply log updated text to an already opened gui window (without the user clicking on anything) would be able to easily do it.
I know you can update to a gui window just as you do to the console because there are many examples in the url. However, in the examples they are doing it by having the user click on a button. I can easily do it that way (outputting to both the gui and the console) but I don't want the user to have to click. I don't want my application to have to pause. I want the user to be able to just glance at the window at anytime and be able to see the last thing what was sent to the console, and in my three line Java code below.
And again, I'm certain that after today I'll be able to have a three lines (absolutely less than 5) to output text to both the console and the gui window such as:
// sample code begin
// -------------------------------------
String updatetext = "About to run a process that might take an hour... sit back and wait...\n";
System.out.printl(updatetext);
textArea.append(updatetext);
int count = 0;
TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(3600); // Scanning all the local and network hard drives for files larger than 1 gig
// Scanning all the local and network hard drives for files larger than 1 gig
updatetext = "The scan has completed with " << count << " files found";
System.out.println(updatetext);
textArea.append(updatetext);
// -------------------------------------
// sample code end
I believe the above Java working example (from one of my Java applications) should clearly show exactly what I'm trying to do. The sleep function isn't sleep in my code. It's a function to go out and work and it take about an hour to complete.
-- L. James
--
L. D. James
ljames apollo3 com
www.apollo3.com/~ljames
On Thu, 2013-08-01 at 15:43 +0200, Jonas Platte wrote:
I understand what kind of application you try to write. But as I already said, this is no good approach to start learning the basics because it's a complicated thing that involves creating a thread that runs concurrently to the one in which the window runs. The problem you have here which you don't have on the console, is that if you stop updating the window (the main loop is stuck because of long comutations or such a thing), the window manager thinks it's not responding and will show an error message. If you don't output anything on the console, you don't output anything. That's no problem.
And about your experiences on forums: That is exactly what I want to say. Even if other languages or libraries have a simple possibility to do this, there is nothing like that in gtkmm, at least I can't remember seeing something like this. And on the mailing list it doesn't seem like anyone does, either.
Am 01.08.2013 15:28, schrieb L. D. James:
I wont the window to be updated when there is new text to update to it.
Thank of a program that updates to console out. If a process runs and only take one second you might want to output a "." to indicate that it has itterated and and some point update a status saying "scan completed.. moving on to analysis of the scann".
The next process might take an hour or two. There is no reason to have any updates to the console out, or the gui window for the hour while the next process is running. Personally I would find it a waste of cycles to have to program your code to have to keep polling or checking the gui window when it has no reason to output anything to it.
In Java it's simple. The GUI window is there and the console is there. From my routine I can do anything I won't to do without any timer. I just run code. At some point I want to show the user an update. I just add these simple lines to my code:
// computer code
//------------------------------------------------
String updatetext = "About to run a process that might take an hour... sit back and wait...\n";
cout << updatetext << endline;
textArea.append(updatetext);
// ------------------------------------------------
// code end
I appreciate your taking the time to try to understand my objective. Just like you might not be understanding it, many people might be missing the objective. The developers who wrote all the sample at https://developer.gnome.org/gtkmm-tutorial/3.2/gtkmm-tutorial.html probably missed the point, that is why there isn't an example included with the documents.
After we get this figured out and working, there is a chance that a new section to include this might be added.
Of course it's something that a good programmer could probably figure out. But again, a good programmer could probably figure out most of the samples in the list without being given specific examples. There is a lot of duplication in the list. But again, I believe this important task is an oversight that deserves attention.
I have described this chore in a number of forums. Many people start out by saying it's a complicated matter to implement. Since so many people appears to think it's complicated, I believe this should warrant a mention in the docs.
Again, the task is to simply append, to text that is already displayed to a user in the gui window at the same time writing to the console.
-- L. James
--
L. D. James
ljames apollo3 com
www.apollo3.com/~ljames
On Thu, 2013-08-01 at 14:55 +0200, Jonas Platte wrote:
You wrote:
I'm just trying to have a gui window set that I can continually update from a function, ie (myfunction()).
But when should the window be updated?
If you want to update the UI every X seconds, you can use a timeout signal. You shouldn't let the code execute independently from gtkmm. This is only usable when you execute code that takes long, and as you seemingly try to learn the basics of gtkmm, the best would be to just start with a different approach.
And about my example not working: I'm not sure what's the problem, perhaps you have to call show_all on the window before calling run. I only use glade for my UI's, so I'm not very familiar with the initialization part.
Am 01.08.2013 14:19, schrieb L. D. James:
You said:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
You're problem is that your "myLabel" class isn't a label but a window. You're deriving it from Gtk::Window.
Normally, you wouldn't derive your own label, I wonder what you wanted to accomplish with that...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm sure your question is rhetoric. However I'll clarify it anyway. I'm very novice when it comes to classes and gtkmm. I'm so new to gtkmm that I haven't up to this point written anything that actually works except to copy a few examples and look at them. I still don't fully understand them.
None of the examples I have found has a functionality to be able to append to data that is presented without the user clicking a button.
I'm trying to get a window that has text data in it and have a way to continue with various c++ functions that will log the output to the gui window while at the same time logging the output to std::cout.
I wrote something very crude in an effort to clarify what I'm trying to do.
I cleaned my progress up as much as I could to something that would actually compile and give an idea of how far I have getting in attempting to achieve what I have described.
If I were a little more confused about C++ and showed a line: (cin << "Hello" << endl;) and said I was trying to print hello to the console, it should be clear to a C++ programer and novice such as me as well to understand what is wrong with the line and to advise that "cin" is for console in and "cout" is for console out. I hope it would be known by my description of what I'm trying to accomplish. At present, the code isn't doing it, because I don't know exactly what code to type to accomplish what I'm describing in my summary.
I appreciate your input... and again, I'm sure your comment was rhetoric.
I studied and compiled your example without errors. The output is identical to my crude attempt. There is no text in the window. I appreciate your line by line description. When I find a way to get it to actually work I'll keep it as reference and continue to study the line by line examples to more fully digest the details.
As far as using signals, if it turns out that is the only way to accomplish my objective, I'll eventually get around to it, because I will stay with it until it's working. I'm not intentionally eliminating anything. I'm just trying to have a gui window set that I can continually update from a function, ie (myfunction()).
By the way, the closest that I could find on the gtkmm example site is the progress bar example. I spent a lot of time studying it, but at present it was too complicated for me to figure out how to remove all the buttons, show a text screen and where to place my function.
-- L. James
--
L. D. James
ljames apollo3 com
www.apollo3.com/~ljames
On Thu, 2013-08-01 at 02:27 +0200, Jonas Platte wrote:
You're problem is that your "myLabel" class isn't a label but a window. You're deriving it from Gtk::Window.
Normally, you wouldn't derive your own label, I wonder what you wanted to accomplish with that...
To make clear how you would structure your code with an own Window class normally, here is a new example:
#include <gtkmm.h>
class myWindow : public Gtk::Window
{
protected:
Gtk::Label myLabel;
public:
myWindow();
void set_main_label(Glib::ustring); // Glib::ustring is just another string class. It's used by gtkmm and is fully compatible with std::string
}
myWindow::myWindow()
// instead of set_text, you could also pass the string to be shown by the label in its constructor:
: myLabel("Hello...") // constructing myLabel with "Hello..." as argument
{
myLabel.set_text("Hello..."); // setting myLabel's text via method
add(myLabel); // I read you used Java somewhen, there the syntax would be "this->add(myLabel);". You just don't need the "this->" in C++
}
// you could also just make myLabel public, but I consider that bad style
void myWindow::set_main_label(Glib::ustring str)
{
myLabel.set_text(str);
}
int main()
{
Gtk::Main kit(argc, argv);
myWindow win;
win.set_main_label("Changed the text");
kit.run(win); // if you declare that kit thing, you should also use it instead of the static function ^^
return 0;
}
The thing is, you have only got one thread here. And the window is when calling run, not before. This was just to make clear how to structure it. Adding a seperate thread would be much too complicated I think. You should understand how to let the program react the certain events first, I think. And for your purpose it would be enough to change the label after a certain amount of time, thus a timeout signal, right?
One last thing: When you call set_text of a Gtk::Label, and then change the string passed to set_text, that won't affect the label. You normally would just call set_text every time instead of changing some string (but you could even simply derive your own Label class to get that behaviour).
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