[comp.windows.x.motif] Adding borders to Motif'ized Table Widget

gardner@oriel.UUCP (Phillip E. Gardner) (02/04/91)

I got a version of the Table widget from Kee Hinckley.  This version
works great with Motif!  I am wandering how I ever lived without it!
Thanks to everyone involved in creating it!

I would like to extend it so that it provides borders around the
cells.  For my needs, I only need it to either put a single-line
border around EVERY cell or to not put ANY borders.  Implementing
something as fancy as occurs in Microsoft's Word (Mac) would be
better, however.

Before I spend much time doing this, I thought it would be best to
ask for ideas.  If you have any ideas, please let me know.

BTW, I'll be away from my computer for 10 days so I'll have to catch
up with any replies when I get back.

Thanks to anyone and everyone that takes the time to reply!

marbru@attc.UUCP (Martin Brunecky) (02/05/91)

In article <4@oriel.UUCP> gardner@oriel.ww.com (Phillip E. Gardner) writes:
>I got a version of the Table widget from Kee Hinckley.  This version
>works great with Motif!  I am wandering how I ever lived without it!
>
>I would like to extend it so that it provides borders around the
>cells.  For my needs, I only need it to either put a single-line
>border around EVERY cell or to not put ANY borders.  Implementing
>something as fancy as occurs in Microsoft's Word (Mac) would be
>better, however.
>
>Before I spend much time doing this, I thought it would be best to
>ask for ideas.  If you have any ideas, please let me know.
>

    You can have borders if you use Widgets:
    table*borderWidth:  1
    table.borderWidth:  0

    However, IF you are using Motif Gadgets, you have a problem:
    Motif gadgets do NOT support border !

    I *think* OSF is looking into this. If they DO FIX gadgets, then
    there is NOTHING to do with the Table widget.
    If they don't fix Motif ....

    I am principally oposed to making widgets DO things that they don't
    have to. For example all those Motif resources like XmNentryBorder
    are a big bullshit. 
    Using resource files properly, you can get the same result WITHOUT
    an explicit code in the widget. Thus the XmNentryBorder resource
    is redundant, useless and only unnnecessarily making a widget
    overly complex. (note thet even using XmNentryBorder in Motif
    manager does not create a border around a gadget ).


    Back to your suggestion. If you want some more fancy border, such
    as Motif 3D outlines, I believe that the RIGHT way to do it is
    either using outlines built into components, or implementing
    a lightweight composite BorderWidget (unfortunatelly, R4 got rid
    of a composite object - we could have a BorderGadget ).
    But I'd leave the Tab widget to do geometry management, not graphics.
    Though this is just my opinion...

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Martin Brunecky                           {...}sunpeaks!auto-trol!marbru
(303) 252-2499                        (sometimes also:  marbru@auto-trol.COM )
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