More questions about FXRuby

ruby-talk
1

Greetings,
I have been working with FXRuby for about a month
now and really like it. There is however the problem
wth documentation.
Right now for documentation I’m using is the
class index on Fox’s homepage. It it a wonderful
resource, but I have found when working with a
particular widget, many methods are poorly documented
and some cases missing all togeather. I doing a
.methods and then comparing what I get to what’s
documented. Doing the .methods is good, but using some
of those methods are kind of a shot in the dark. I
only have a method name to go on as a dicription of
the functionality.
The rdoc docs that come with FXRuby are woefully
incomplete. I find this a major stumbleing block on
this wonderful, stable, cross platform libary. I would
help with the documentaion, but my project plate is a
little full right now. Are there any better and more
well-rounded places to find documentation on Fox?

 I have some misc. questions about getting FXRuby

to bent to my will, so to speek, as I’m having
problems finding the method calls I want.

 1) How do you lock the size of a window?
 2) How do you disable the close window "X" (Or

whatever your window manager uses) in the upper right
corner (or where ever your window manager puts it)
3) If you are using FXScrollArea or any of it’s
children, like FXTable or FXText, how do you force a
vertical scrollbar to appear? Even, for example if
FXText is blank or FXTable only has one row, even
though it takes up a lage space.
4) How do you lock the size the the fields in an
FXTable so that the user can’t change field sizes?
5) Can you limit how much text is written in a
line in FXText and force it to word-wrap at so many
characters. (i.e. disable the horazontal scrollbar)

 I'm sure many of these can be done with a single

method call or an argument, but I’m having problems
finding the correct one.
Thanks.

 -Mark

P.S. On a side note, when my project plate is a little
more empty, I’m thinking of making a FXRuby GUI-maker
using FXRuby. Something like Glade, but leaning more
towards VB. (You click on a button and you get a
window where you can write your method for that event)
That should make life much more simple for me.

P.P.S Not really an FXRuby thing, but more of an
observation of Fox itself. Redhat is now pushing for a
more unified look for desktops. Not starting a KDE vs.
Gnome debate, I agree with the move. Fox doesn’t seem
to be themeable (except for color) and uses a look for
the widgets borrowed from Windows 9x. Anyone know if
this is changing in the future? I would like to have
my apps running with other RH8 apps (for my cutomers)
and not have look so jarring. Any comments on this?

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2

Mark Krell wrote:

 I have been working with FXRuby for about a month

now and really like it. There is however the problem
wth documentation.

Yes.

 The rdoc docs that come with FXRuby are woefully

incomplete. I find this a major stumbleing block on
this wonderful, stable, cross platform libary. I would
help with the documentaion, but my project plate is a
little full right now. Are there any better and more
well-rounded places to find documentation on Fox?

You can also check the FOX Community Wiki site
(http://www.fifthplanet.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl). This is still a very new
site but already has a lot of useful information. Especially good is its
FAQ, one which is maintained independently of the “official” FAQ on the
FOX home page. The Wiki FAQ tends to have more code examples, etc.

Other than these, your best bet is to subscribe to the foxgui-users
mailing list and ask away. Instructions for how to subscribe are listed
on the FOX home page.

 1) How do you lock the size of a window?

The answer depends on whether it’s a top-level window (like your
application’s main window, or a dialog box) or a child window (i.e. most
other widgets).

For top-level windows, you simply don’t want to pass in the DECOR_RESIZE
option to the window’s constructor. I think most of the example programs
distributed with FXRuby just pass in the DECOR_ALL option (which
includes DECOR_RESIZE) and that’s why they’re all resizeable.

For child windows, you want to use the LAYOUT_FIX_WIDTH and
LAYOUT_FIX_HEIGHT layout hints. Again, I tend to prefer layouts that
allow the child widgets to grow or shrink as needed and so these may not
show up much in the FXRuby example programs.

 2) How do you disable the close window "X" (Or

whatever your window manager uses) in the upper right
corner (or where ever your window manager puts it).

Don’t pass in the DECOR_CLOSE option to the window’s constructor. Again,
this option is rolled into the catch-all DECOR_ALL option and that’s why
it shows up in all the example programs. It’s also important to note
that these decoration options (i.e. the DECOR_xxx flags) are just
suggestions to the window manager which it’s free to ignore.

 3) If you are using FXScrollArea or any of it's

children, like FXTable or FXText, how do you force a
vertical scrollbar to appear? Even, for example if
FXText is blank or FXTable only has one row, even
though it takes up a lage space.

Pass in the VSCROLLER_ALWAYS flag Similarly, pass in the
HSCROLLER_ALWAYS flag to force the horizontal scrollbar to always be
visible.

 4) How do you lock the size the the fields in an

FXTable so that the user can’t change field sizes?

Don’t pass in the TABLE_ROW_SIZABLE or TABLE_COL_SIZABLE flags.

 5) Can you limit how much text is written in a

line in FXText and force it to word-wrap at so many
characters. (i.e. disable the horizontal scrollbar).

Yes, by passing in the TEXT_WORDWRAP flag to FXText’s constructor and
then setting the number of columns at which to wrap by calling
FXText#wrapColumns=().

P.S. On a side note, when my project plate is a little
more empty, I’m thinking of making a FXRuby GUI-maker
using FXRuby. Something like Glade, but leaning more
towards VB. (You click on a button and you get a
window where you can write your method for that event)
That should make life much more simple for me.

That would be cool :wink:

P.P.S Not really an FXRuby thing, but more of an
observation of Fox itself. Redhat is now pushing for a
more unified look for desktops. Not starting a KDE vs.
Gnome debate, I agree with the move. Fox doesn’t seem
to be themeable (except for color) and uses a look for
the widgets borrowed from Windows 9x. Anyone know if
this is changing in the future? I would like to have
my apps running with other RH8 apps (for my cutomers)
and not have look so jarring. Any comments on this?

Support for themes is definitely planned for a future FOX release, but I
wouldn’t expect it anytime soon.