[Glade-users] building Glade 3.6.0

[lrn1986 at gmail.com (LRN)]

Damon Register wrote:
> LRN wrote:
>   
> > I can't say that i've been into Borland and MSVC for 10 years (more like
> > 5-6), but i've grasped the widget packing concept quickly enough.
> >     
> I understand somewhat how to use it but just don't understand
> why it is easier or better in all cases.  I have used it in some
> limited cases with groups of buttons but it is still easier for
> me to generate fixed layouts.
>   
It's better because it handles resizing correctly and automagically.
You can fix size of some elements that HAVE to stay the same size.
You can prevent elements from expanding (which is usually done with
buttons - they should be just as big as their labels and then some).
But usually you don't mind that everything else moves and scales.
Edits/combos should grow right, lists should grow right and down. If you
have a few growable things, they should all grow simultaneously, without
overlapping. Packing does that. And the opposite is correct - things
would shrink well too, as much as they can (then the window will stop
shrinking). And if you've packed a few controls in a container, they
will be always properly aligned to each other.
In Delphi/Builder there is "anchoring" that does some automatic
positioning, but that's all it is capable of.

To make it short: spend some time on implementing a sane layout, and
after that it will handle resizing by itself.
Remember, that resizing is also important for internationalization,
because things such as button labels will have different sizes in
different locales.