Using a gtkmm widget
Our examples all tend to have the same structure. They follow these steps for using a Widget:
- Declare a variable of the type of Widget you wish to use, generally as member variable of a derived container class. You could also declare a pointer to the widget type, and then create it with new in your code. Even when using the widget via a pointer, it's still probably best to make that pointer a member variable of a container class so that you can access it later.
- Set the attributes of the widget. If the widget has no default constructor, then you will need to initialize the widget in the initalizer list of your container class's constructor.
- Connect any signals you wish to use to the appropriate handlers.
- Pack the widget into a container using the appropriate call, e.g. Gtk::Box::append().
If you don't want all widgets to be shown, call Gtk::Widget::hide() on the widgets that you don't want to show. If a container widget is hidden, all of its child widgets are also hidden, even if hide() is not called on the child widgets.