[Glade-devel] Feature requests for the next version of Glade

[Jeannot Langlois]

Hello,



After working with Glade 2.0.0 for some time, I have thought of two features which could be *GREATLY* appreciated in the next release of Glade...:

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1.  In the "Properties" window's "Signals" tab, I'd like a new TextEntry field to be added for the user to enter extra data which could be passed to the designated handler function (using every handler's last "gpointer user_data" parameter).  

This would be *VERY* handy. 

Example: when needing to pass a GtkWidget* pointer to a "clicked" or "activate" or whatever event handler function, the gtk_widget_destroy() function could be called properly within the event handler using the "user_data" gpointer parameter, just like this:

...first the callback would be registered this way in the "interface.c" file (code which would be generated by Glade):

g_signal_connect ((gpointer) mainwindow_quit_button, 
                  "clicked",
                  G_CALLBACK (on_mainwindow_quit_button_clicked),
                  topLevelWindow);   /* topLevelWindow is a GtkWidget* pointer which represents the ROOT window;
                                        it has been entered by the user in Glade >> Properties >> Signals >> extra param            
                                        TextEntry field */


...the callback would be looking like this in the "callbacks.c" file (code within the callback would be generated manually by the user):

void on_mainwindow_quit_button_clicked(GtkButton *button, gpointer user_data)
{
    gtk_widget_destroy(GTK_WIDGET(user_data));  /* "topLevelWindow" is received as a gpointer and casted as a GTK_WIDGET */
}


I can actually achieve this result very easily in my case by editing the "interface.c" file and replacing the "NULL" fourth parameter by "topLevelWindow" in the g_signal_connect(...) function call which is generated by Glade 2.0.0, but this change is LOST everytime the interface.c file is regenerated by Glade 2.0.0...  

Code regeneration by Glade 2.0.0 happens *QUITE* often when designing/maintaining a UI, so that's why I'd like to suggest a new TextEntry field in the "Signals" tab which could be used by the user to pass an optional parameter to signal handlers using the "gpointer user_data" parameter without the need to manually edit "interface.c" all the time.


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2.  When using custom (= NON-stock) pixmaps (mostly PNG files but I guess this applies to XPM as well) in the "<projectname>/pixmaps" directory, after a "make install" is performed during a normal <projectname> installation, the pixmaps cannot be found when running <projectname>:


(myprojectname:27937): GnomeUI-WARNING **: Could not find GNOME pixmap file myprojectname/channels.png



It turns out that pixmaps which are used by GnomeUIInfo menu entries like this one...

{
    GNOME_APP_UI_ITEM, N_("Channels..."),
    NULL,
    (gpointer) on_channel_menuChoice, NULL, NULL,
    GNOME_APP_PIXMAP_FILENAME, "myprojectname/channels.png",
    0, (GdkModifierType) 0, NULL
}

...are looked up in the default GNOME pixmaps directory, which appears to be "/usr/share/pixmaps/<projectname>" on my system.  

Could it be possible to the user to MANUALLY configure the pixmaps's location PREFIX (by example, a TextEntry could be added somewhere in "Properties" for the user to enter a specific PREFIX, like "/usr/local/share/pixmaps/" -- which seems to be a default for "make install" (?)).  I can actually workaround this problem by defining a...

AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(GNOME_ICONDIR, "${ac_default_prefix}/share/pixmaps", [Location of custom GNOME icons])

...or a...

AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(GNOME_ICONDIR, "${prefix}/share/pixmaps", [Location of custom GNOME icons])

...constant in my "configure.in" file so I can prefix all my GnomeUIInfo entries who use custom pixmaps like this:

{
    GNOME_APP_UI_ITEM, N_("Channel..."),
    NULL,
    (gpointer) on_channel_menuChoice, NULL, NULL,
    GNOME_APP_PIXMAP_FILENAME, GNOME_ICONDIR "myprojectname/channels.png",  /* GNOME_ICONDIR added */
    0, (GdkModifierType) 0, NULL
}

...and they get opened properly because GNOME_ICONDIR "myprojectname/channels.png" gets transformed into "/usr/local/share/pixmaps/myprojectname/channels.png" after preprocessing.

Again, this requires constant modification to the "interface.c" file as it gets overwritten by Glade 2.0.0 constantly when changes are made to the UI.

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When replying, please CC: me at "jeannot12 AT linuxmail DOT org" since I may not be subscribed to the Glade devel mailing list for long (web mail quotas are small... :-).

All your comments are welcome.  I can provide more details if necessary.


I hope these suggestions will be appreciated, as I'm sure they would help quite a few people who've encountered these problems with Glade 2.0.0.

Regards,


--
Jeannot Langlois
B. Sc. Computer Science
jeannot12 AT linuxmail DOT org
-- 
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