[comp.windows.x] Athena textWidget - accessing text

meo@stiatl.UUCP (Miles O'Neal) (11/16/88)

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing this question asked a while
back but don't recall seeing an answer - altho I was out for a
while and it probably was answered.

We are running X11r2 on a Sun386i, and do not have all the patches
installed (mail to expo keeps bouncing).

How do you access the text that has been entered in a text widget?

The manual tells you how to replace it, or select it (which is
NOT what I want to do). After lots of time with my nose in the
source, it seemed the way to do it was via the Read function, e.g.

(tw->text.source->Read) (source, start_pos, &text_block, num_chars);

which should put the current <num_chars> characters, starting at
<start_pos>, from the source in the text widget, into text_block.ptr
(actually just return a pointer).

This returns me an empty buffer, with text_block.firstPos and txt_block.length
set to 0, as well.

I also tried using the _XtTextGetText () function, and the entire client
just locked down solid; all the buttons quit responding, etc. Even the
twm function to kill a client didn't really do it, although the client
disappeared from the display; the process kept running until I aborted
it.

-MileS                                             decvax!gatech!stiatl!meo