I have a sort of UI being made in a 'responsive' like manor, drawing a box at the bottom of the terminal using tput.
I was wondering if there is anyway to have it "redraw" the box when the terminal is resized?
You should be able to trap this event with bash, like this:
trap 'do something' SIGWINCH
Yes. ncurses, the program which handles screen manipulation in linux (not bash!) sends a signal out when the window size is changed: SIGWINCH (window size changed). You'll want to handle the event and call a function to redraw your program when this event is received, which differs in implementation based on which programming language you're using. But for example, in C, it would be something like:
#include <signal.h>
void handleResize(int dummy)
{
// redraw things here
}
int main(...)
{
signal(SIGWINCH, handleResize);
...
}
Hope that helps!
Related
I am designing a GUI using C, Glade, and Gtk.
I have some signals configured in glade to update the labels of various widgets, mainly GtkButton and GtkLabel. The overall functionality is that when a certain radio button is clicked, all button and labels change in response (language selection).
I am using the function gtk_label_set_label(...) in the widgets _draw() function and it works as expected (text changes, g_print occurs (once)).
gboolean on_lblMyLabel_draw(GtkLabel *label, gpointer *user_data) {
gtk_label_set_label(label, "custom text");
g_print("%s\n", "custom text");
return FALSE;
}
However, when I attempt the same from a button,
gboolean on_btnMyButton_draw(GtkButton *button, gpointer *user_data) {
gtk_button_set_label(button, "custom text");
g_print("%s\n", "custom text");
return FALSE;
}
The text does not update, but dissappears, and the g_print() statement prints forever (as if the draw is recursively calling itself).
Funnily, if I move the button code from _draw to _click, it works as expected, however, I need the GUI to redraw itself, so updating on click is impractical.
Is there a way, using _draw() to prevent this?
Is there a better way to do this?
thx!
Is there a way, using _draw() to prevent this?
No, and you shouldn’t be using the draw signal for this either. It has an entirely different purpose, and will be called each time a widgets redraws itself. That’s also the reason why your button is going into an infinite recursion: you changed its label so it figures it needs to be redrawn; that redraw leads to your callback being called, which again changes the label, etc etc
Is there a better way to do this?
Yes, and you mention it yourself already: make sure you do the logic of changing the widgets in the appropriate place (for example, on a click event), and let the GTK widgets take care of redrawing themselves.
Unless you’re doing something very exotic (like not running an event loop, which you automatically get with GtkApplication), this will all work fine.
I'v heard about the buffer. Seems like the window is similar to the buffer.
What's the difference between them? and WHY it's called a 'window'??
Buffer is a specialization of Window.
Window notifies you immediately of new windows, along with an observable to observe the values that will be in that window.
In contrast, Buffer does not notify you immediately of new windows. Instead it internally collects the items in the window. When the window is complete, Buffer will send a notification with an array containing all of the items in the window.
Conceptually, you can write buffer by using window like so:
Rx.Observable.prototype.buffer = function () {
return this.window
.apply(this, arguments)
.flatMap(function (w) { return w.toArray(); });
};
As to why it is called "window"...unless the Rx authors come answer, any answers will be purely speculative. Window is a term commonly used to represent a time interval in many disciplines, including software development & signal processing.
For a long time I have been wondering how modal dialog is implemented.
Let me take Qt as an example. (Nearly all GUI toolkit has this mechanism)
In the main event loop, a slot is called, and in this slot a modal dialog is opened. Before the dialog is closed, the slot doesn't return control to the main event loop. So I thought that the main event loop is blocked and become unresponsive. Apparently this is not true, since when you open a modal dialog, the background main window is still working, like repainting its UI or keep displaying a curve or some graph. It just becomes not to accept any user input.
I did an experiment. I didn't open a modal dialog in the slot, but start a new thread there, and wait for the thread to finish in that slot. This definitely blocked the main event loop.
How modal dialog is implemented after all? How does it keep main event loop unblocked but at the same time blocked the calling slot?
There is only ever a need for a single event loop, and it does not block when a modal dialog appears. Though, I suppose, different toolkits may handle this differently. You would need to consult the documentation to know for sure. Conceptually, however, it all works in the same way.
Every event has a source where the event occured. When a modal dialog appears, the event loop either ignores or redirects all events that originate outside of the dialog. There's really no magic to it. Generally speaking, it's like an if statement in the event loop code that says "if (modal_is_shown() and !event_is_in_modal_window()) {ignore_and_wait_for_next_event()}". Of course, the logic is a bit more complicated, but that's the gist of it.
If you're looking for examples here's another one:
In Tk, there is only ever one event loop. Modal behavior (doesn't have to be dialog, can also be tooltips, textbox etc) is simply implemented by making the main window ignore mouse and keyboard events. All other events like redraws etc. can still be serviced because the event loop is still running.
Tk implements this via the [grab] function. Calling grab on a UI object makes it the only object able to respond to keyboard and mouse events. Essentially blocking all other objects. This doesn't mess with the event loop. It merely temporarily disables event handlers until the grab is released.
It should be noted that Unix-like operating systems running X also has grab built in to the windowing system. So it's not necessarily implemented merely by UI toolkit libraries but is sometimes also a built in feature of the OS. Again, this is implemented by simple blocking/disabling of events instead of instantiating separate event loops. I believe this also used to be the case for the older MacOS before OSX. Not sure about OSX or Windows though. Even though modality is often implemented by the OS itself, toolkits like Qt and Tk often implement their own mechanisms to standardize behaviors across different platforms.
So the conclusion is, it is not necessary to block the main event loop to implement modality. You just need to block the events and/or event handlers.
The answer by https://stackoverflow.com/users/893/greg-hewgill is correct.
However, reading the follow-up discussion between him and https://stackoverflow.com/users/188326/solotim , I feel that there is room for further clarification, by means of prose and some pseudo-code.
I'll handle the prose part with a fact-list:
The main message loop does not run until the modal activity is finished
However, events are still delivered while the modal activity is running
This is because there is a nested event loop within the modal activity.
So far I just repeated Greg's answer, please bear with me as it is for continuity's sake. Below is where I hope to contribute additional, useful info.
The nested event loop is part of the GUI toolkit, and as such, it knows the callback functions related to every window in existence
When the nested event loop raises an event (such as a repaint event directed to the main window), it invokes the callback function associated with that event. Note that "callback" here may refer to a method of a class representing a window, in object-oriented systems.
the callback function does what is needed (e.g., repaint), and returns right back to the nested message loop (the one within the modal activity)
Last, but not least, here's pseudo-code to hopefully illustrate further, using a fictitious "GuiToolkit":
void GuiToolkit::RunModal( ModalWindow *m )
{
// main event loop
while( !GuiToolkit::IsFinished() && m->IsOpen() )
{
GuiToolkit::ProcessEvent(); // this will call
// MainWindow::OnRepaint
// as needed, via the virtual
// method of the base class
// NonModalWindow::OnRepaint
}
}
class AboutDialog: public ModalWindow
{
}
class MainWindow: public NonModalWindow
{
virtual void OnRepaint()
{
...
}
virtual void OnAboutBox()
{
AboutDialog about;
GuiToolkit::RunModal(&about); // blocks here!!
}
}
main()
{
MainWindow window;
GuiToolkit::Register( &window ) // GuiToolkit knows how to
// invoke methods of window
// main event loop
while( !GuiToolkit::IsFinished() )
{
GuiToolkit::ProcessEvent(); // this will call
// MainWindow::OnAboutBox
// at some point
}
}
In general, a modal dialog box of this type is implemented by running its own message loop instead of your application's message loop. Messages directed to your main window (such as timer or paint messages) will still get delivered, even during the modal operation.
In some situations, you may have to be careful that you don't recursively do the same thing repeatedly. For example, if you trigger a modal dialog box on a timer message combined with some persistent flag, you'll want to make sure you don't keep bringing up the same dialog box repeatedly whenever the timer message fires.
I have a problem with my mouse. Every now and then it will double click when I only single click. I know this is a problem with the mouse, and I've contacted the manufacturer, still waiting for a reply. But in the meantime I was wondering if there was a way that I could find out when the left mouse button had been clicked twice within a very short period (probably 1-10 milliseconds) of time, and disable the second click.
I mostly know how to use hooks, so that's not the problem, my main question is how to stop an event from happening, if that's possible.
The information on how to prevent the mouse message from being processed is in the documentation of the "LowLevelMouseProc callback function" in MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms644986(v=vs.85).aspx
Specifically, it says: "If the hook procedure processed the message, it may return a nonzero value to prevent the system from passing the message to the rest of the hook chain or the target window procedure." So, if you know about windows hooks, you know how to do it.
EDIT: Actually, now that I think more about it, you don't want to discard any event. You simply want to transform the doubleclick event into just another left-button-down event. I believe you can do it from within the hook handler, and it will work. Have you tried it?
In C#'s WinForms, you write an event handler involving the mouse receiving a MouseEventArgs object. Inside it, you can access certain info such as the number of times it was clicked, for example.
protected void RowClicked(object sender, MouseEventArgs evt)
{
// Trigger it when the mouse was clicked only once
if( evt.Button.Clicks == 1 ) {
// ... more things ...
}
return;
}
Other GUI libraries have other possibilities. That said, your problem has nothing to do with GUI libraries. You have to change the sensitivity of your mouse, in the configuration options of your operating system. For example, in the Windows' control panel, you can change how much time has to pass between a click and another one to be considered a doble-click. In lUbuntu, you can do the very same, in System menu >> Preferences >> Keyboard and Mouse.
I'd like to prevent my window from being updated until I finish receiving data from the server and render it. Can I hook on the WM_PAINT event, or better still call some Win32API method to prevent the window from being updated and unfreeze it later?
More info:
In the context of an MMC snapin written in C#, our application suffers from annoying flickering and double sorting behaviour:
We use MMC's listViews, but since we subscribe to the sort event.
MMC does it's own magic and sorts the page being displayed (and we can't override that), and when we receive a reply from our server we change the listView again.
each row change is done sequentially, there's no beginUpdate etc. (AFAIK).
Normally hooking into WM_PAINT is the way to go, but make sure you also ignore all WM_ERASEBKGND notifcations, otherwise you'll still get flicker, because Windows erases the Windows area for you. (Return non-zero to prevent Windows from doing that)
One other possibility is to use the LockWindowUpdate function, but it has some drawbacks:
Only one window can be locked
Upon unlock the whole desktop and all sub-windows (i.e. everything) is repainted, resulting in short flash of the whole desktop. (It's worse on XP than on Vista)
Some controls have BeginUpdate and EndUpdate APIs for this purpose.
If you do something (e.g. hook and ignore paint events) do disable painting, then a way to force a repaint later is to call the Invalidate method.
OK, after all searching and checking I've found that LockUpdateWindow is bad idea - see for example articles of Raimond Chen OldNewThing. But even to implement the idea of SetRedrawWindow wasn't so simple - because what I had was only received from IConsole2* pConsole->GetMainWindow() HWND handler of main window. By setting it to SetRedraw = FALSE it was disappeared in very strange manner. Though to make the procedure run only for the TreeView and not for the whole application (ours left panel) I ran
EnumChildWindows(hWnd, SetChildRedraw, FALSE); //stopping redraw
//... here you do your operations
EnumChildWindows(hWnd, SetChildRedraw, TRUE); //restarting redraw
where SetChildRedraw callback was defined in next way:
#define DECLARE_STRING(str) TCHAR str[MAX_PATH]; ZeroMemory(str, sizeof(str));
BOOL CALLBACK SetChildRedraw(HWND hwndChild, LPARAM lParam)
{
RECT rcChildRect; ZeroMemory(&rcChildRect, sizeof(rcChildRect));
DECLARE_STRING(sText)
GetClassName(hwndChild, sText, MAX_PATH);
if (wcsstr(sText, L"SysTreeView32") != NULL)
{
SetWindowRedraw(hwndChild, lParam);
if (lParam == TRUE)
{
GetWindowRect(hwndChild, &rcChildRect);
InvalidateRect(hwndChild, &rcChildRect, TRUE);
}
}
return TRUE;
}