Re: embedding gtk widgets in a buffer

[joakim@verona.se]

Richard M Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     - create new instances of the widgets for every window the widget is
>       supposed to be shown. This is visualy appealing, but troublesome to
>       implement, at least if each widget is really going to look like its
>       counterpart in another window, especially for xembed.
>
> Would that work?  In the case of xembed, can both widgets talk
> to the same process and show the same output?

No, in the case of xembed it would probably not work very well.
>
>     - the selected window and other windows are not drawn the same way. The
>       selected window contains the real live widgets. The non-selected
>       windows show some kind of shadow copy of the widget, in the simplest
>       case a grey rectangle, more elaborately a bitmap copy of the widget at
>       the time the window selection switch was made.
>
> That ought to do the job, if it is possible to get the whole output.

Just to clarify, the placeholder widgets in non-selected windows, would
be placeholders, not live buttons. They wont become live again until
that window is selected again. The placeholder widgets are a snapshot
copy of the state the widgets had when they were live at that position.
(It should be possible to update the placeholder widgets more often, but
I wont start out with that premise)

Im not quite sure if it would be posible to get a bitmap dump of
any sort of widget either, xembed is again probably a problem.

> I see a possible problem in the case where the widget is partially or
> wholely scrolled off the screen.

I had in mind getting the widgets to temporarily render into offscreen
bitmaps. If that's at all possible, the clipping of the widget should not
be a problem.

-- 
Joakim Verona