Re: gnome canvas and gtk menu questions

["John (J5) Palmieri" <johnp martianrock com>]

On Fri, 2003-06-20 at 16:37, John Heidemann wrote:
> On 20 Jun 2003 14:56:34 EDT, "John (J5) Palmieri" wrote: 
> >
> >> >> Any suggestions about how to change the color of a single menu item?
> >> >> Is this a style/theming problem?  (I want to control just one menu
> >> >> entry.  I'm happy to let theming work for all the other parts of the
> >> >> menu.)
> >> >
> >> >	So what color do you want to set it to ? what if the theme uses that
> >> >color for the background ? will a different coloured menu give the user
> >> >the heebie jeebies - given that no other app does this sort of evilness
> >> >;-)
> >> 
> >> In general, I would agree with you.  But this app has a very specific
> >> reason to do this: when you click on a blob, it represents a process
> >> on your system, and you get a menu that lets you send signals to the
> >> process.  That process has a color, keyed to the name of the process.
> >> The menu needs to have visual feedback to indicate that it's working
> >> on the process you want, not something else.
> >> 
> >> But don't take my word for it, download the Tcl/Tk lavaps code or RPM
> >> from my web page and try it out.
> >> 
> >
> >How about this suggestion.  Instead of changing the colors of the menu
> >items, change the icon.  You can place icons next to menu items and
> >icons are usualy more eyecatching then coloring the fonts.  This allows
> >you to keep the items legible no matter what theme is used.  If you also
> >wish to have seperate icons for each menu item you can create a series
> >of colored icons based on the base icon.  Or to make things easy (and
> >you're not artisticly inclined) you can use a set of one type of icon,
> >such as translucent colored spheres.    
> 
> Yes, I've thought about that as an alternative.  Two downsides: I'd have to
> generate the icons on the fly, and icons aren't as big as the whole
> menu item.
> 
> I'd have to generate icons on the fly because the color is
> algorithmically generated to anywhere in the RGB space.  It's not just
> a few discrete colors that for which I can have precomputed icons.
> 
> Icons also are pretty small (about as high as the text and square).
> I'd prefer to color the whole width of the menu.
> 
> (Of course, what would be really cool would be to match the process to
> its icon in the file system/menu.  But doing that without the support
> of the application seems like a non-starter.)
> 
> Another option, can I replace the text of the menu with an image?
> That solves the width problem.  I'd guess if I have to access
> GTK_BIN(menu_item)->child, I can probably replace it as well, if I
> have to.

gtk_label_set_markup(GtkLabel *label, gchar* str) 

Parses str which is marked up with the Pango text markup language,
setting the label's text and attribute list based on the parse results.

gtk_label_set_markup(GTK_BIN(menu_item)->child, "<span
foreground=\"#FF0000\">I am Red</span>");

Try that.

--
J5




>    -John Heidemann