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Sprog::help::prop_auto_dialog.3pm

Properties Dialogs

If you are developing a gear class that has configurable properties, you will need a properties dialog. You could use a custom gear view subclass and put code in it to construct a dialog, but it's easier to use the 'auto dialog' facility provided by Sprog::GtkGearView and Sprog::GtkAutoDialog.

To use this facility, define a dialog using the Glade GUI designer and save it to a file. Then in your gear class, define a method called "dialog_xml" which returns the contents of the .glade file. For example:

   sub dialog_xml {
     return <<'END_XML';
   <?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?> <!--*- mode: xml -*-->
   <!DOCTYPE glade-interface SYSTEM "http://glade.gnome.org/glade-2.0.dtd">
   <glade-interface>
     ... lots of XML here ...
   </glade-interface>
   END_XML
   }
 
 

There are a few things you need to do when you define your dialog in Glade.

The widget name for the dialog window should be 'properties'. You can use another name but unless you need more than one dialog, it's easier to stick with the default.

The widgets which will be connected to properties of your gear should have names of the form:

   PAD.property_name
 
 

Where PAD stands for Properties Auto Dialog and property_name should match one of your gear properties.

That's all you need to do to connect Entry boxes, TextViews, CheckButtons, SpinButtons and ColorButtons to properties. The framework will automatically take care of pre-populating the widgets from the properties when the dialog is displayed and saving the widget values back into the properties when OK is clicked.

RadioButtons use a slightly different naming convention since there will be two or more widgets feeding different values into the same property. Use the form:

   PAD.property_name.value
 
 

Where all the radio buttons in a group will have the same property_name but each will have a different value.

File selectors are implemented using a text entry and a 'Browse' button. The text entry should use the "PAD.property_name" form, but the browse button should have a behaviour associated with it using this form:

   PAD.browse_to_entry(property_name,style)
 
 

Where property_name will match the text entry widget and style will be one of 'save' or 'open' (save is the default).

Is that it?

Yes, that really is all that's required to support all the properties dialogs of the gears shipped with Sprog.

Support for additional widget types and behaviours will be added as the need arises.