GtkFixed
[Layout Containers]

Detailed Description

The GtkFixed widget is a container which can place child widgets at fixed positions and with fixed sizes, given in pixels.

GtkFixed performs no automatic layout management.

For most applications, you should not use this container! It keeps you from having to learn about the other GTK+ containers, but it results in broken applications. With GtkFixed, the following things will result in truncated text, overlapping widgets, and other display bugs:

Themes, which may change widget sizes.

Fonts other than the one you used to write the app will of course change the size of widgets containing text; keep in mind that users may use a larger font because of difficulty reading the default, or they may be using Windows or the framebuffer port of GTK+, where different fonts are available.

Translation of text into other languages changes its size. Also, display of non-English text will use a different font in many cases.

In addition, the fixed widget can't properly be mirrored in right-to-left languages such as Hebrew and Arabic. That is normally GTK+ will flip the interface to put labels to the right of the thing they label, but it can't do that with GtkFixed. So your application will not be usable in right-to-left languages.

Finally, fixed positioning makes it kind of annoying to add/remove GUI elements, since you have to reposition all the other elements. This is a long-term maintenance problem for your application.

If you know none of these things are an issue for your application, and prefer the simplicity of GtkFixed, by all means use the widget. But you should be aware of the tradeoffs.

Code Example: 

 GtkWidget *fixed;
 GtkWidget *button;

 fixed = gtk_fixed_new ();
 gtk_container_add (GTK_CONTAINER (window), fixed);
 gtk_widget_show (fixed);

 for (i = 1 ; i <= 3 ; i++) {
 // Creates a new button with the label "Press me"
 button = gtk_button_new_with_label ("Press me");
 
 //When the button receives the "clicked" signal, it will call the
 function move_button() passing it the Fixed Container as its argument.
 
 g_signal_connect (G_OBJECT (button), "clicked",
              G_CALLBACK (move_button), (gpointer) fixed);

 //This packs the button into the fixed containers window.
 gtk_fixed_put (GTK_FIXED (fixed), button, i*50, i*50);
 
 //  The final step is to display this newly created widget.
 gtk_widget_show (button);
 *}


Data Structures

struct  _GtkFixed
 GtkFixed instance structure. More...
struct  _GtkFixedClass
 GtkFixed instance class structure. More...

Functions

GtkWidget * gtk_fixed_new (void)
 Creates a new GtkFixed.
void gtk_fixed_put (GtkFixed *fixed, GtkWidget *widget, gint x, gint y)
 Adds a widget to a GtkFixed container at the given position.
void gtk_fixed_move (GtkFixed *fixed, GtkWidget *widget, gint x, gint y)
 Moves a child of a GtkFixed container to the given position.
void gtk_fixed_set_has_window (GtkFixed *fixed, gboolean has_window)
 Sets whether a GtkFixed widget is created with a separate GdkWindow for widget->window or not.
gboolean gtk_fixed_get_has_window (GtkFixed *fixed)
 Gets whether the GtkFixed has its own GdkWindow.

Function Documentation

gboolean gtk_fixed_get_has_window ( GtkFixed *  fixed  ) 

Gets whether the GtkFixed has its own GdkWindow.

See gdk_fixed_set_has_window().

Parameters:
[in] fixed : a GtkFixed.
Returns:
TRUE if fixed has its own window.

void gtk_fixed_move ( GtkFixed *  fixed,
GtkWidget *  widget,
gint  x,
gint  y 
)

Moves a child of a GtkFixed container to the given position.

Parameters:
[in] fixed : a GtkFixed.
[in] widget : the child widget.
[in] x : the horizontal position to move the widget to.
[in] y : the vertical position to move the widget to.
Returns:
void

GtkWidget* gtk_fixed_new ( void   ) 

Creates a new GtkFixed.

Returns:
a new GtkFixed widget

void gtk_fixed_put ( GtkFixed *  fixed,
GtkWidget *  widget,
gint  x,
gint  y 
)

Adds a widget to a GtkFixed container at the given position.

Parameters:
[in] fixed : a GtkFixed.
[in] widget : the widget to add.
[in] x : the horizontal position to place the widget at.
[in] y : the vertical position to place the widget at.
Returns:
void

void gtk_fixed_set_has_window ( GtkFixed *  fixed,
gboolean  has_window 
)

Sets whether a GtkFixed widget is created with a separate GdkWindow for widget->window or not.

(By default, it will be created with no separate GdkWindow). This function must be called while the GtkFixed is not realized, for instance, immediately after the window is created.

This function was added to provide an easy migration path for older applications which may expect GtkFixed to have a separate window.

Parameters:
[in] fixed : a GtkFixed.
[in] has_window : TRUE if a separate window should be created
Returns:
void

Generated on Mon Mar 31 01:01:00 2008 by  doxygen 1.5.4