At 05:17 PM 1/27/03 +0000, you wrote:

>I can't believe it's very difficult. I mean, take an example - I'm
>looking at Evolution right now, a GTK app. I have it maximised; the tree
>view on the left has no scrollbars. If I make it too thin for the whole
>tree view to be completely displayed horizontally, guess what? A
>scrollbar appears. If I make it too short for it to be completely
>displayed vertically (I'm sure you can see where I'm going with
>this...:>), hey, another scrollbar appears! Just like that. SURELY this
>can't be *so* hard for the Mandrake tools to implement? I guess Mandrake
>has the slight extra problem of starting its tools up with an
>appropriate window size, but that must surely be possible too.

Hmmm... everything is possible with enough code but 
is it worth the bother, that's always the question.
I have just done a few minutes of search on the Internet, and
looking at :
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/gtk/gtkwindow.html

I see that this is not a simple matter of setting a few properties
on a window to create it with toolbars; it seems that what you have
to do is to create a parent window of a special kind, and the real
window to be a child of this window. It seems that Gtk automatically
expands a window when widgets are added to it :

>A toplevel window will always change size to ensure its child widgets
>receive their requested size. This means that if you add child widgets,
>the toplevel window will expand to contain them.

For fun, I read also later :
> Furthermore GTK+ has a tendency to re-expand the window if size is 
>recalculated for any reason.

Well, I am a programmer and when I read about a software tool that
it exhibits 'tendancies', I run. It all but announces a world of 
horrors.

I don't really know as I don't touch Gtk, but what I find suspicious
is that feature is absent from most Gtk software. If *everyone* was
doing it but Mandrake, your opinion would be certain. But like another
poster said, Evolution is a big app; it is probably not your typical
open source software written by a few enthusiasts; it had some serious
corporate backing from what I understand.

Gerard


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