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Configuring widgets

  The next step when building an application with XF is to set the widget parameters. Parameters that can be configured for widgets are e.g. the foreground color, or the text font. To change the parameters of a widget, the menu item (Configuration | Parameters) can be selected. It is also possible to double-click with the mouse button 3 at the widget to be configured. This activates the ``parameter setting'' dialog for the currently selected widget, or the double-clicked widget.

The parameter dialog box (an example is shown in figure gif) allows the setting of different parameters (resources) for the widgets. For some of these resources special dialogs allow an interactive selection of possible values, by double clicking the mouse button 3 in the value field inside the ``parameter setting'' dialog. A very important parameter is the command parameter. This parameter allows it to bind functionality (Tcl commands) to a widget (e.g. a button or a menu item).

Each widget class has its own parameter dialog. For some widgets (like canvas or menu), there exist special dialog boxes that provide support for sophisticated features of the widget class (like drawing graphical objects in a canvas widget, or building a menu). For all parameters which are not covered with these dialog boxes, a ``general parameter'' dialog provides access to all resources that can be modified for a widget (see figure gif).

Very often, certain widget parameters are identical for a great number of widgets. In this case, the parameter setting for widget groups can be used (see figure gif). This dialog allows it to select groups of widgets, and to set parameters for all these widgets at once. The basic handling is like that of the ``general parameter'' dialog.



Harry Beker
Thu Feb 29 18:06:38 MET 1996