How to enforce GladeVCP widget sizes...?

Hi again-

As long as I'm punting today, I might as well ask the other question that has me stumped...!

When it comes to the geometry of widgets, I'm getting more comfortable all the time with the non-WYSIWYG-iness of designing with Glade. I understand that child widgets are sized (and packed) according to the particulars of their parents. Dynamic re-sizing of windows and their contents and all that.

But there has to be SOME fixed height/width somewhere, from which everything else follows...doesn't there? For example:

Say AXIS is set to run fullscreen. Overall it has some definite pixel height/width.

It adds a GladeVCP panel to the right of the preview. I'm guessing that the preview widget width is specified somewhere, and the Glade panel gets what is "leftover" (to be divided up among its child widgets). But where is this happening?

When I attempt to fix the height/width of, say a GladeVCP panel (or its buttons or other widgets), I am unsuccessful. It seems as though the Height Request or Width Request should be a way to say "Hey, make these buttons 300 pixels wide." or whatever (as long as there is sufficient room in their parent). But so far I seem to have no control over the size of anything!

Thanks!
Patrick

If you are setting height requests on the main window they will be ignored because when the panel is placed in AXIS the main window is stripped off.

it's a hard subject to explain and always takes a bunch of fooling around to get it right. Could you post a panel and explain something you want specifically?
then I could attempt to fix it and you could see the difference.
Setting height/width requests does work on say buttons, but keep in mind they are _requests_ and most widgets are designed with internal minimums that you can't defeat.
the alignment widget can make weird and wonderful changes too...

Chris M

Thanks a lot, Chris. Through sheer bloody-mindedness I have poked and prodded at just about all of the available widget parameters and FINALLY managed to get things looking more or less the way I want!!!

This is probably a total newb suggestion, but in the case of extra AXIS panels (given that you don't get to see what things look like until they're packed into one)...

..wouldn't it be handy to be able to explain to Glade exactly what the parent's geometry etc. is so that it can pack stuff "on the fly', without having to fire up AXIS every time you want to see how things are going?

I'm glad you got it - with practice it gets better.

Putting Gladevcp in AXIS borders on what we call a hack - it uses low level Xwindow tricks to do it. the fact it works as well as it does is a testament to the two developers who did it.

While GladeVCP can be a pain in the beginning - I think it is far better then PyVCP's process.

Chris M

To force a widget to mantain its asigned height and width, i found only one way, or better work arround. You need to place the widget in a table, asign the with and hight you want the widget to have and then select in the table properties shrink on horizontal and vertikal.

You can check gmoccapy.glade on the jog button

Norbert