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Although you can use C++ code to instantiate and arrange widgets, this can soon become tedious and repetitive. And it requires a recompilation to show changes. The Glade application allows you to layout widgets on screen and then save an XML description of the arrangement. Your application can then use the Gtk::Builder API to load that XML file at runtime and obtain a pointer to specifically named widget instances.
This has the following advantages:
You still need C++ code to deal with User Interface changes triggered by user actions, but using Gtk::Builder for the widget layout allows you to focus on implementing that functionality.
Gtk::Builder
must be used via a
Glib::RefPtr
. Like all such classes, you need to use a
create()
method to instantiate it. For instance,
auto builder = Gtk::Builder::create_from_file("basic.glade");
This will instantiate the windows defined in the .glade
file.
To instantiate just one window, or just one of the child widgets, you can specify the name of a widget as the second parameter. For instance,
auto builder = Gtk::Builder::create_from_file("basic.glade", "treeview_products");