Re: Gtkada, Gtkada_Builder.Add_From_String problem.

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On 09/08/2016 00:41, olivermkellogg@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, August 8, 2016 at 9:08:29 PM UTC+2, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>> [...]
>> If the GUI is more or less complex you would not be able to create it
>> otherwise.
>
> At my work, we developed Link-16 [1] support tools with literally hundreds of layout pages.

It is kind of alarming to hear that GTK is used for such applications. 
No safety requirements at all?

> I wonder how long it would have taken to make all these layouts without a GUI builder.

Is it dialog forms? I would probably generate them dynamically from the 
list of fields. The advantage is that you can integrate the plausibility 
checks into the widget data type representing the form.

Such GUIs are very rare, at least in automation and control. In any case 
fixed dialog forms is the least problem with GUI implementation, even if 
you have hundreds of. Lists, tree views and text edit widgets make real 
trouble and GUI builder is only hindrance there. Furthermore, forms are 
usually dynamic, you have some fields present or not depending on the 
context and other inputs.

 > (To be precise, they were originally made using RAPID [2] and
 > converted to Glade using rapid2glade.pl [3])

Why not to directly deserialize widgets skipping GLADE? In a comparable 
case:

http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de/ada/aicwl.htm#13

the editor only changes widget properties. All widgets support 
serialization/deserialization interface (stream I/O). Though manual 
widget construction is still easier than drawing.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de