Vertical Shrinkage with Horizontal Expansion, and vice versa

[Bill William <wm2015email gmail com>]

Is it possible to Shrink a widget Horizontally and expand it Vertically

at the same time?  and vice versa, Shrink a widget Vertically and Expand it Horizontally?

I was just wondering because i keep running into this problem with gtkmm where I want a widget to expand horizontal and at the same time shrink to the minimum width vertically...or vica versa... and all I have is a Gtk::Frame container add() or Gtk::ListBoxRow to put the widget inside of. Its like gtkmm is missing the concept of having opposite "springs" for veritical and horizonal directions.  pushing outwards or pulling inwards differently on vertical and horizonal directions. So far, I can only figure out how to get gtkmm to having inner springs that pull inwards in both veritical and horizonal directions at the same time, or outwards springs that push outwards in both the veritical and horizonal directions at the same time.  But not a mix of these two concepts in the same container.  There's the set_hexpand, and set_vexpand..  which don't seem to work the way i think they should... maybe somebody has a better understanding of how these work?

Here's a problem i was trying to figure out the other day:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/41344241/gtkmm-c11-how-to-create-a-custom-composite-widget-out-of-other-widgets

Here's another example where I can't figure out how to strink the label height of each row, while expanding to fill the scrollable window with the entire listbox.

 //======================================================
// GTKMM3/C++11
//======================================================
#include <gtkmm.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <sstream>
#include <initializer_list>

using namespace std;

//======================================================
// List Row
//======================================================
class ListRow : public Gtk::ListBoxRow
{
public:
    ListRow(const string text) : c1{text} {
       add(hbox);
       hbox.pack_start(c1, Gtk::PackOptions::PACK_SHRINK);
       set_halign(Gtk::Align::ALIGN_START);
       set_vexpand(false);
       show_all_children();
    }
protected:
    Gtk::Label c1;
    Gtk::Box   hbox {Gtk::ORIENTATION_HORIZONTAL};
};


//======================================================
// List Box with scrollbars
//======================================================
class ListBoxScroll : public Gtk::ScrolledWindow {
  public:
    ListBoxScroll();
    ListBoxScroll(initializer_list<string> list);
    void api_AddRow(string line);
    void api_AddRows(vector<string>& lines);
    void api_Clear();

  protected:
    Gtk::Box      hbox {Gtk::ORIENTATION_HORIZONTAL};
    Gtk::ListBox  listbox;
};


//======================================================
// ListBoxScroll
//======================================================
inline ListBoxScroll::ListBoxScroll()
{
    add(hbox);
    hbox.pack_start(listbox, Gtk::PackOptions::PACK_EXPAND_WIDGET);
    show_all_children();
}

inline ListBoxScroll::ListBoxScroll(initializer_list<string> list) {
  for (auto s : list) {
    api_AddRow(s);
  }
}

inline void ListBoxScroll::api_Clear() {
  vector<Gtk::Widget*> children = listbox.get_children();
  for (Widget* w : children) {
    listbox.remove(*w);
    delete w;
  }
}

inline void ListBoxScroll::api_AddRow(string text)
{
    auto row = Gtk::manage(new ListRow{text});
    listbox.append(*row);
    row->show();
}

inline void ListBoxScroll::api_AddRows(vector<string>& lines) {
  for (string& L : lines) {
    api_AddRow(L);
  }
}


class WnViewer : public Gtk::Window {
  public:
    WnViewer();
    ~WnViewer();

  private:
    Gtk::Box          m_vbox       {Gtk::ORIENTATION_VERTICAL};
    Gtk::Box          m_box        {Gtk::ORIENTATION_HORIZONTAL};
    Gtk::Box          m_boxleft    {Gtk::ORIENTATION_VERTICAL};
    Gtk::Box          m_boxbtn     {Gtk::ORIENTATION_HORIZONTAL};
    Gtk::Button       m_btnClear   {"Clear"};
    Gtk::Button       m_btnRefresh {"Refresh"};
    ListBoxScroll     m_listbox;
    Gtk::TextView     m_textview;
};

inline WnViewer::WnViewer() {
  set_title("Viewer");
  set_border_width(6);
  set_default_size(600, 600);

  add(m_vbox);
  m_vbox.pack_start(m_boxbtn, Gtk::PackOptions::PACK_SHRINK);
  m_vbox.pack_start(m_box);
  m_boxbtn.pack_start(m_btnClear,   Gtk::PackOptions::PACK_SHRINK);
  m_boxbtn.pack_start(m_btnRefresh, Gtk::PackOptions::PACK_SHRINK);

  m_box     .pack_start(m_boxleft,  Gtk::PackOptions::PACK_SHRINK);
  m_box     .pack_start(m_textview, Gtk::PackOptions::PACK_EXPAND_WIDGET);
  m_boxleft .pack_start(m_listbox,  Gtk::PackOptions::PACK_EXPAND_WIDGET);
  m_listbox.set_size_request(200);


  for(int i=0; i < 30; i++) {
    stringstream x;
    x << "Testing " << i << "\n";
    m_listbox.api_AddRow(x.str().c_str());
  }

  auto lamba_clear = [&]() {
      m_listbox.api_Clear();
  };

  auto lamba_refresh = [&]() {
    for(int i=0; i < 30; i++) {
      stringstream x;
         x << "Testing " << i << "\n";
      m_listbox.api_AddRow(x.str().c_str());
    }
  };

  m_btnClear   .signal_clicked().connect(lamba_clear);
  m_btnRefresh .signal_clicked().connect(lamba_refresh);

  show_all_children();
}

inline WnViewer::~WnViewer() {

}

//======================================================
// Main
//======================================================
int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    auto appMain = Gtk::Application::create(argc, argv, "org.gtkmm.example");
    WnViewer WnViewer1;
    appMain->run(WnViewer1);
    return 0;
}