Re: Fixed layout

[Patrick Hallinan]

Is there any plan to provide first-class support for Fixed layout in Glade?  For example, the ability to move and resize widgets directly with the mouse.  This kind of thing is extremely useful in the early stages of GUI development when the desired design/layout is changing a lot.  It is also quite nice for quick/dirty GUI's.

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[Tristan Van Berkom-2]

On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 3:27 PM, Patrick Hallinan
<patrick.j.hallinan@...> wrote:
> Is there any plan to provide first-class support for Fixed layout in Glade?
> For example, the ability to move and resize widgets directly with the
> mouse.  This kind of thing is extremely useful in the early stages of GUI
> development when the desired design/layout is changing a lot.  It is also
> quite nice for quick/dirty GUI's.

Sure, remember that you should not use GtkFixed under almost any
circumstances, GtkFixed is definitely not useful to you if you are
writing an application that is supposed to integrate into a desktop
environment.

With that in mind, just hold SHIFT key down in the workspace... or
push the Drag/Resize button I put on the toolbar because the
SHIFT key was so undiscoverable.

Cheers,
                -Tristan

...ofcourse I didnt go through all that trouble just for the
not-so-relevant GtkFixed widget... you can also use drag/resize for
widgets inside more useful containers, like GtkBox and GtkTable...


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[Tristan Van Berkom-2]

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Patrick Hallinan
<patrick.j.hallinan@...> wrote:
[...]
>>
>> Sure, remember that you should not use GtkFixed under almost any
>> circumstances,
>
> This is mantra but not necessarily true.  Fixed layout lowers that bar for
> GUI development.  The success of Visual Basic screams that fixed layout is
> valuable.

Sure, after 5 years or so we get tired of going though all the details of
why its important to use resizable containers in GTK+.

Without getting into too many details, suffice it to say that GTK+ isnt
designed to work that way, and the GtkFixed and GtkLayout are just
very primitive implementations of a canvas (i.e. you will get better
results using coordinates + z coordinates in goocanvas or clutter
with a flying textures type environment).

>>
>> GtkFixed is definitely not useful to you if you are
>> writing an application that is supposed to integrate into a desktop
>> environment.
>
> This is mantra but not necessarily true.  It's a question of when to
> experience the pain.

Its just a question of writing an application that will naturally run
on different resulotions with different system font sizes.

The pain is just part of GTK+, on the other hand it would be
really great if somebody cared enough to enhance the Glade
workspace to better manipulate resizable containers in more
intuitive and comprehensible ways.

>>
>> With that in mind, just hold SHIFT key down in the workspace... or
>> push the Drag/Resize button
>
> I'm in the process of changing part of a Dialog and I wanted to do some mock
> ups.  This particular Dialog is created programmcially.  I tried using Glade
> with the Fixed container and I found it too painful.  I guess I'll resort to
> pen and paper.
>
> In the past I've used Visual Studio and/or SharpDevelop to do a mock up but
> I don't have access to Windows at the moment.
>
>>
>> I put on the toolbar because the
>> SHIFT key was so undiscoverable.
>
> Even the icon was undiscoverable to me because I've used Glade in the past.
>
> I think that a perfect open source world would have a Lua (or Python)
> development environment with a GUI builder that had a simple mode with all
> the features of Visual Basic and an advanced mode with the beloved
> GtkBox's.
>

Again, using GtkBox is just the way its done in GTK+, in a perfect world
the GTK+ plugin for Glade would offer great support for GtkBox manipulation,
and then the goocanvas or clutter plugin would obviously work with coordinates,
because the toolkits are coordinate based -- GTK+ is simply not
coordinate based.

Cheers,
          -Tristan
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