<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >The DrawingArea Widget, And Drawing</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.79"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="GTK+ 2.0 Tutorial" HREF="book1.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Scribble, A Simple Example Drawing Program" HREF="c2422.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Event Handling" HREF="x2431.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Adding XInput support" HREF="x2529.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >GTK+ 2.0 Tutorial</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x2431.html" ACCESSKEY="P" ><<< Previous</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Scribble, A Simple Example Drawing Program</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x2529.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next >>></A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="SEC-THEDRAWINGAREAWIDGET" >The DrawingArea Widget, And Drawing</A ></H1 ><P >We now turn to the process of drawing on the screen. The widget we use for this is the DrawingArea widget. A drawing area widget is essentially an X window and nothing more. It is a blank canvas in which we can draw whatever we like. A drawing area is created using the call:</P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" >GtkWidget* gtk_drawing_area_new (void);</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><P >A default size for the widget can be specified by calling:</P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" >void gtk_drawing_area_size (GtkDrawingArea *darea, gint width, gint height);</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><P >This default size can be overridden, as is true for all widgets, by calling <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >gtk_widget_set_size_request()</TT >, and that, in turn, can be overridden if the user manually resizes the the window containing the drawing area.</P ><P >It should be noted that when we create a DrawingArea widget, we are <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >completely</I > responsible for drawing the contents. If our window is obscured then uncovered, we get an exposure event and must redraw what was previously hidden.</P ><P >Having to remember everything that was drawn on the screen so we can properly redraw it can, to say the least, be a nuisance. In addition, it can be visually distracting if portions of the window are cleared, then redrawn step by step. The solution to this problem is to use an offscreen <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >backing pixmap</I >. Instead of drawing directly to the screen, we draw to an image stored in server memory but not displayed, then when the image changes or new portions of the image are displayed, we copy the relevant portions onto the screen.</P ><P >To create an offscreen pixmap, we call the function:</P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" >GdkPixmap* gdk_pixmap_new (GdkWindow *window, gint width, gint height, gint depth);</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><P >The <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >window</TT > parameter specifies a GDK window that this pixmap takes some of its properties from. <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >width</TT > and <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >height</TT > specify the size of the pixmap. <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >depth</TT > specifies the <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >color depth</I >, that is the number of bits per pixel, for the new window. If the depth is specified as <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >-1</TT >, it will match the depth of <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >window</TT >.</P ><P >We create the pixmap in our "configure_event" handler. This event is generated whenever the window changes size, including when it is originally created.</P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" >/* Backing pixmap for drawing area */ static GdkPixmap *pixmap = NULL; /* Create a new backing pixmap of the appropriate size */ static gboolean configure_event( GtkWidget *widget, GdkEventConfigure *event ) { if (pixmap) g_object_unref(pixmap); pixmap = gdk_pixmap_new(widget->window, widget->allocation.width, widget->allocation.height, -1); gdk_draw_rectangle (pixmap, widget->style->white_gc, TRUE, 0, 0, widget->allocation.width, widget->allocation.height); return TRUE; }</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><P >The call to <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >gdk_draw_rectangle()</TT > clears the pixmap initially to white. We'll say more about that in a moment.</P ><P >Our exposure event handler then simply copies the relevant portion of the pixmap onto the screen (we determine the area we need to redraw by using the event->area field of the exposure event):</P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" >/* Redraw the screen from the backing pixmap */ static gboolean expose_event( GtkWidget *widget, GdkEventExpose *event ) { gdk_draw_drawable(widget->window, widget->style->fg_gc[gtk_widget_get_state (widget)], pixmap, event->area.x, event->area.y, event->area.x, event->area.y, event->area.width, event->area.height); return FALSE; }</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><P >We've now seen how to keep the screen up to date with our pixmap, but how do we actually draw interesting stuff on our pixmap? There are a large number of calls in GTK's GDK library for drawing on <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >drawables</I >. A drawable is simply something that can be drawn upon. It can be a window, a pixmap, or a bitmap (a black and white image). We've already seen two such calls above, <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >gdk_draw_rectangle()</TT > and <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >gdk_draw_drawable()</TT >. The complete list is:</P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" >gdk_draw_point () gdk_draw_line () gdk_draw_rectangle () gdk_draw_arc () gdk_draw_polygon () gdk_draw_pixmap () gdk_draw_bitmap () gdk_draw_image () gdk_draw_points () gdk_draw_segments () gdk_draw_lines () gdk_draw_pixbuf () gdk_draw_glyphs () gdk_draw_layout_line () gdk_draw_layout () gdk_draw_layout_line_with_colors () gdk_draw_layout_with_colors () gdk_draw_glyphs_transformed () gdk_draw_glyphs_trapezoids ()</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><P >See the reference documentation or the header file <TT CLASS="LITERAL" ><gdk/gdkdrawable.h></TT > for further details on these functions. These functions all share the same first two arguments. The first argument is the drawable to draw upon, the second argument is a <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >graphics context</I > (GC).</P ><P >A graphics context encapsulates information about things such as foreground and background color and line width. GDK has a full set of functions for creating and modifying graphics contexts, but to keep things simple we'll just use predefined graphics contexts. Each widget has an associated style. (Which can be modified in a gtkrc file, see the section GTK's rc file.) This, among other things, stores a number of graphics contexts. Some examples of accessing these graphics contexts are:</P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" >widget->style->white_gc widget->style->black_gc widget->style->fg_gc[GTK_STATE_NORMAL] widget->style->bg_gc[gtk_widget_get_state(widget)]</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><P >The fields <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >fg_gc</TT >, <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >bg_gc</TT >, <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >dark_gc</TT >, and <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >light_gc</TT > are indexed by a parameter of type <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >GtkStateType</TT > which can take on the values:</P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" >GTK_STATE_NORMAL, GTK_STATE_ACTIVE, GTK_STATE_PRELIGHT, GTK_STATE_SELECTED, GTK_STATE_INSENSITIVE</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><P >For instance, for <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >GTK_STATE_SELECTED</TT > the default foreground color is white and the default background color, dark blue.</P ><P >Our function <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >draw_brush()</TT >, which does the actual drawing on the screen, is then:</P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" >/* Draw a rectangle on the screen */ static void draw_brush (GtkWidget *widget, gdouble x, gdouble y) { GdkRectangle update_rect; update_rect.x = x - 5; update_rect.y = y - 5; update_rect.width = 10; update_rect.height = 10; gdk_draw_rectangle (pixmap, widget->style->black_gc, TRUE, update_rect.x, update_rect.y, update_rect.width, update_rect.height); gtk_widget_queue_draw_area (widget, update_rect.x, update_rect.y, update_rect.width, update_rect.height); }</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><P >After we draw the rectangle representing the brush onto the pixmap, we call the function:</P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" >void gtk_widget_queue_draw_area (GtkWidget *widget, gint x, gint y, gint width, gint height)</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><P >which notifies X that the area given by the <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >x</TT >, <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >y</TT >, <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >width</TT > and <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >height</TT > parameters needs to be updated. X will eventually generate an expose event (possibly combining the areas passed in several calls to <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >gtk_widget_queue_draw_area()</TT >) which will cause our expose event handler to copy the relevant portions to the screen.</P ><P >We have now covered the entire drawing program except for a few mundane details like creating the main window.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x2431.html" ACCESSKEY="P" ><<< Previous</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="book1.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x2529.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next >>></A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Event Handling</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="c2422.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Adding XInput support</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >