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<div class="chapter" title="Chapter 15. The Drawing Area Widget">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title">
<a name="chapter-drawingarea"></a>Chapter 15. The Drawing Area Widget</h2></div></div></div>
<div class="toc">
<p><b>Table of Contents</b></p>
<ul>
<li><span class="sect1"><a href="chapter-drawingarea.html#sec-cairo-drawing-model">The Cairo Drawing Model</a></span></li>
<li><span class="sect1"><a href="sec-cairo-drawing-lines.html">Drawing Straight Lines</a></span></li>
<li><span class="sect1"><a href="sec-cairo-curved-lines.html">Drawing Curved Lines</a></span></li>
<li><span class="sect1"><a href="sec-cairo-drawing-arcs.html">Drawing Arcs and Circles</a></span></li>
<li><span class="sect1"><a href="sec-drawing-text.html">Drawing Text</a></span></li>
<li><span class="sect1"><a href="sec-draw-images.html">Drawing Images</a></span></li>
<li><span class="sect1"><a href="sec-drawing-clock-example.html">Example Application: Creating a Clock with Cairo</a></span></li>
</ul>
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<p>
The <code class="classname">DrawingArea</code> widget is a blank window that gives
you the freedom to create any graphic you desire. Along with that freedom
comes the responsibility to handle expose events on the widget. When a
widget is first shown, or when it is covered and then uncovered again it
needs to redraw itself. Most widgets have code to do this, but the
DrawingArea does not, allowing you to write your own expose event signal
handler to determine how the contents of the widget will be drawn. This is
most often done by overriding the virtual
<code class="methodname">on_expose_event()</code> member function.
</p>
<div class="note" title="Note" style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in;"><table border="0" summary="Note">
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<td rowspan="2" align="center" valign="top" width="25"><img alt="[Note]" src="icons/note.png"></td>
<th align="left">Note</th>
</tr>
<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><p>
Before <span class="application">gtkmm</span> version 2.10, drawing was mostly done with Graphics Contexts
(<code class="classname">Gdk::GC</code>) and other GDK drawing functions, but this
has been largely superceded by the <a class="ulink" href="http://cairographics.org" target="_top">Cairo</a> graphics library and its
C++ binding <span class="application">Cairomm</span>. See the <a class="link" href="chapter-gdk-drawing.html" title="Appendix F. Drawing With GDK">Gdk Appendix</a> for a description of the deprecated GDK techniques. In general, the Cairo drawing API is simpler than the GDK one, and it is
generally recommended to use the Cairo drawing methods wherever possible
in preference to the older GDK drawing methods.
</p></td></tr>
</table></div>
<p>
You can draw very sophisticated shapes using Cairo, but the methods to do
so are quite basic. Cairo provides methods for drawing straight lines,
curved lines, and arcs (including circles). These basic shapes can be
combined to create more complex shapes and paths which can be filled with
solid colors, gradients, patterns, and other things. In addition, Cairo
can perform complex transformations, do compositing of images, and render
antialiased text.
</p>
<div class="note" title="Cairo and Pango" style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in;"><table border="0" summary="Note: Cairo and Pango">
<tr>
<td rowspan="2" align="center" valign="top" width="25"><img alt="[Note]" src="icons/note.png"></td>
<th align="left">Cairo and Pango</th>
</tr>
<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><p>Although Cairo can render text, it's not meant to be a replacement for
Pango. Pango is a better choice if you need to perform more advanced
text rendering such as wrapping or ellipsizing text. Drawing text with
Cairo should only be done if the text is part of a graphic.</p></td></tr>
</table></div>
<p>
In this section of the tutorial, we'll cover the basic Cairo drawing
model, describe each of the basic drawing elements in some detail (with
examples), and then present a simple application that uses Cairo to draw
a custom clock widget.
</p>
<div class="sect1" title="The Cairo Drawing Model">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">
<a name="sec-cairo-drawing-model"></a>The Cairo Drawing Model</h2></div></div></div>
<p>
The basic concept of drawing in Cairo involves defining 'invisible'
paths and then stroking or filling them to make them visible.
</p>
<p>
To do any drawing in <span class="application">gtkmm</span> with Cairo, you must first create a
<code class="classname">Cairo::Context</code> object. This class holds all of the graphics state parameters that
describe how drawing is to be done. This includes information such as
line width, color, the surface to draw to, and many other things. This
allows the actual drawing functions to take fewer arguments to simplify
the interface. In <span class="application">gtkmm</span>, a <code class="classname">Cairo::Context</code> is
created by calling the
<code class="methodname">Gdk::Window::create_cairo_context()</code> function.
Since Cairo context are reference-counted objects, this function
returns a <code class="classname">Cairo::RefPtr<Cairo::Context></code>
object.
</p>
<p>
The following example shows how to set up a Cairo context with a
foreground color of red and a width of 2. Any drawing functions that
use this context will use these settings.
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">Gtk::DrawingArea myArea;
Cairo::RefPtr<Cairo::Context> myContext = myArea.get_window()->create_cairo_context();
myContext->set_source_rgb(1.0, 0.0, 0.0);
myContext->set_line_width(2.0);</pre>
<p>
Each <code class="classname">Cairo::Context</code> is associated with a
particular <code class="classname">Gdk::Window</code>, so the first line of the
above example creates a <code class="classname">Gtk::DrawingArea</code> widget
and the second line uses its associated
<code class="classname">Gdk::Window</code> to create a
<code class="classname">Cairo::Context</code> object. The final two lines
change the graphics state of the context.
</p>
<p>
There are a number of graphics state variables that can be set for a
Cairo context. The most common context attributes are color (using
<code class="methodname">set_source_rgb()</code> or
<code class="methodname">set_source_rgba()</code> for translucent colors), line
width (using <code class="methodname">set_line_width()</code>), line dash pattern
(using <code class="methodname">set_dash()</code>), line cap style (using
<code class="methodname">set_line_cap()</code>), and line join style (using
<code class="methodname">set_line_join()</code>), and font styles (using
<code class="methodname">set_font_size()</code>,
<code class="methodname">set_font_face()</code> and others).
There are many other settings as well, such as transformation matrices,
fill rules, whether to perform antialiasing, and others. For further
information, see the Cairomm API documentation.
</p>
<p>
The current state of a <code class="classname">Cairo::Context</code> can be
saved to an internal stack of saved states and later be restored to the
state it was in when you saved it. To do this, use the
<code class="methodname">save()</code>
method and the <code class="methodname">restore()</code> method. This can be
useful if you need to temporarily change the line width and color (or
any other graphics setting) in order to draw something and then return
to the previous settings. In this situation, you could call
<code class="methodname">Cairo::Context::save()</code>, change the graphics
settings, draw the lines, and then call
<code class="methodname">Cairo::Context::restore()</code> to restore the original
graphics state. Multiple calls to <code class="methodname">save()</code> and
<code class="methodname">restore()</code> can be nested; each call to
<code class="methodname">restore()</code> restores the state from the
matching paired <code class="methodname">save()</code>.
</p>
<div class="tip" title="Tip" style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in;"><table border="0" summary="Tip">
<tr>
<td rowspan="2" align="center" valign="top" width="25"><img alt="[Tip]" src="icons/tip.png"></td>
<th align="left">Tip</th>
</tr>
<tr><td align="left" valign="top">
<p>It is good practice to put all modifications to the graphics state
between <code class="methodname">save()</code>/<code class="methodname">restore()</code>
function calls. For example, if you have a function that takes a
<code class="classname">Cairo::Context</code> reference as an argument, you
might implement it as follows:
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">void doSomething(Cairo::RefPtr<Cairo::Context> context, int x)
{
context->save();
// change graphics state
// peform drawing operations
context->restore();
}</pre>
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