Skip to main content

Automating the widget creation process.

I spent a couple of hours this morning working out a Tcl script that will create the basic components for custom widgets. There are so many repetitive elements converting a few hundred lines of C code which, if one has to edit it all by hand, takes up too much time. I'm also quite notorious for being unable to spot spelling and grammar errors and so any extra help is always welcome. The way in which the module generator works is create create a sub-directory in the src folder, create the necessary *.h, *.c and readme (working on the autodocs pages next) and then patches the Makefile and the files gnocl.c and gnocl.h in readiness for the first compile.

When I've got this to work properly, moving the whole lot into a separate, standalone Tcl/Gnocl app would be the best next move. In this case the main gnocl package can give bindings to the core Gtk+ widget set and any custom extras in a unique package that can be loaded as required.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

gnocl::calendar

Given this module some attention today. Added some of the more package wide options to the module and created customised handler for setting the month. (For some odd reason months are are counted 0-11 whereas days are 1-31.) There's still a little more to do to this one including the addition of code to store diary details. Here's the working test script to show the range of options at work. The percentage substitution string item %e explores something that I've been toying with, the name of the signal/event that initiated the call. Ok, a script can keep its own internal trace but who knows, it might prove useful. #--------------- # calendarTest.tcl #--------------- # Author:   William J Giddings # Date:     07/05/09 #--------------- #!/bin/sh # the next line restarts using tclsh \ exec tclsh "$0" "$@" #--------------- package require Gnocl set cal [gnocl::calendar] $cal configure -day 8 -month 7 -year 1956 $cal configure -rowHeight 1 -colWidth 1 $ca...

Gnocl Dashboard

Over the past few programming sessions I've been working on producing a central point, a dashboard, around which it's possible to see the various Gnocl widgets and commands in operation. In many ways like the demo script which shipped with the earlier releases of Gnocl but offers much more. The introspection functionality provides details of the various options and sub-commands of each Gnocl procedure which are displayed under the associated tab. Sample scripts are included for each item which offers newcomers a clearer insight into how make the most of what's on offer.

Getting Widget Style Properties

Until the move over to Gtk4, Gnocl is still built against the Gtk 2.21 libraries. One of the inconveniences of Gtk is getting and setting widget style settings which are considered to be set globally by the desktop style settings and not for the programmer to tinker around with. Needless to say, there are times when different defaults are preferred, largely to draw the users attention to 'something a bit different'. The function gtk_widget_modify_font  is a convenience function to set the widget basefont as shown in this snippet from the button.c module,  if ( options[baseFontIdx].status == GNOCL_STATUS_CHANGED ) { GtkWidget *label; label = gnoclFindChild ( GTK_WIDGET ( para->button ), GTK_TYPE_LABEL ); PangoFontDescription *font_desc = pango_font_description_from_string ( Tcl_GetString ( options[baseFontIdx].val.obj ) ); gtk_widget_modify_font ( GTK_WIDGET ( label ), font_desc ); pango_font_description_free ( font_desc ); } Unfortunately, there's no d...