Re: why do constructors return GtkWidget?

[Emmanuel Touzery <emmanuel touzery free fr>]

Hi,

> Indeed. Not building interfaces manually may save time now and then, 
> but it hinders your understanding of what is happening. For instance 
> when you want to dynamically make interface changes at run time your 
> left with simple hide & show tricks. I can remember more than once 
> when I wanted to tweak someone else's UI so as to do something like 
> add a button that breaks out some widgets into a new window or adds 
> some more widget filled h/vboxes in the mix, only to start looking at 
> the code and see no code. Simple things become intrusive. Using helper 
> tools is fine and wonderful, just don't strive for oversimplifying 
> everyone else's world.
My wish of that change was really not about simplifying anything but 
about having real types in declarations. It startles me that it doesn't 
seem to bother people much that all the widget variables are declared as 
GtkWidget*. That is the only reason I would like to change anything.

Otherwise I did write GUIs in GTK completely by hand, in GTK1.2, I 
believe at that time there was no glade at all. And probably it's 
impossible to write any serious program without having some of that too 
(in my current "for fun" project I have 2 widgets that are a combination 
of existing widgets, for both at this point I generate the GUI by hand).

emmanuel