Comments on: Rounded boxes in gtk

By: Ryan Paul

Ryan Paul — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:00:42 +0000

In an earlier version of Gwibber, before I started using WebKit, I actually did the round boxes manually with Cairo. It was a bit of a pain and it was hard to get it to look right. You can see the code here: http://is.gd/4SNy2

Qt’s support for CSS theming makes it trivially easy to do this with native widgets. It’s unfortunate that GTK+ is so far behind in this area.

By: Luca Bruno

Luca Bruno — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:04:23 +0000

Use Cairo or Clutter.

By: Jason Smith

Jason Smith — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:46:02 +0000

Yeah I did not mean to imply the code I pasted would at all follow the gtk theme, however the example screenshot he posted did not do that either so I went for the simplest possible approach.

You can pull all the gtk theme colors using the style property available to your widget, which will give you all the colors you need. gtk_paint_box works too, but it wont give you consistent results, plus learning cairo is fun!

By: Hylke

Hylke — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:16:08 +0000

Actually, the corners of the two rectangles (it looks like it’s being build as a rectangle in a rectangle instead of a rectangle with a border) are perfectly round, but the inner rectangle’s radius is too small it seems, so it looks really weird.

By: rectangelo

rectangelo — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:02:04 +0000

@Hylke: Out of curiosity… I have read about rounded corners on http://jimmac.musichall.cz/log/?p=435 but I still feel stupid. Is there a blog post that explains the rounded corners issue for a non-designer? What are correct rounded corners? As a developer I’m always willing to learn.

By: Hylke

Hylke — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:19:53 +0000

Sorry, but those aren’t rounded corners

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:57:35 +0000

Just remember that some of us like boring looking applications. One thing I like about gtk+ apps is that they do all look really similar. I don’t know if it has any actual benefit (perhaps it helps you concentrate on the bits that are actually different? perhaps it lets one person with a good sense of taste make the whole thing pretty?), but looking like every other application is not the end of the world

By: Chris Lord

Chris Lord — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:40:00 +0000

Another +1 for Cairo, although if you want to respect the theme, you can use gtk_paint_box (with detail parameter set to “button” if you want it to look like a button).

It’s not that hard to create native-looking widgets: http://chrislord.net/blog/Software/Dates/jana-gtk-themeing-demo.enlighten

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:39:48 +0000

The user have chosen his gtk theme, respect that… it is not up to you to decide whether should have round or square widgets…

Look at Banshee, they have hard coded some of the design, nooot nice.

All that being said, custom RC can be used or Cairo can be used.

If using Cairo, you need more than ten lines. you need to draw with with the same settings(at least colors) as the current gtk theme and you also need to connect to the gtk theme changed signal, and do a redraw if that happens..

By: zedtux

zedtux — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:26:12 +0000

That’s clear: Cairo.

Don’t know if you’re using C or C++.
If it’s in C++, use GTKmm. (http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtkmm-tutorial/unstable/sec-cairo-drawing-arcs.html.en)