[maemo-developers] Dialogs and gtk_window_set_transient_for()

[From: Tapani Pälli]

Hello;

ext Arto Karppinen wrote:
> Tapani Pälli wrote:
>> Hello;
>>
>> ext Arto Karppinen wrote:
>>  
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> Im developing an app which shows modal dialogs to the user. Also the
>>> app may popup a custom error message dialog if something goes wrong.
>>> Currently i'm setting both dialog to be transient_for to my main
>>> window. This has the effect of the error dialog appearing beneath
>>> the first modal dialog..
>>>
>>>       
>> Does the error happen due to a wrong action in the first dialog? 
>
> The error may happen inside a subsystem which the dialog calls.
>

So, the dialog can be then passed to the subsystem. Any dialogs it
raises it sets parent to be the dialog that called subsystem.

>> Why
>> don't you set error dialog to be transient to the modal dialog?
>>
>>   
>
> Because i have two main windows, and several dialogs for both. The
> subsystem which pops up the error dialog does not have any trivial way
> of figuring out which window happens to be on top at the moment.
>
Is this 'subsystem' running in another thread? I mean can the error
popup while you have already closed the dialog that was calling
subsystem? If not, it should be easy and safe to pass the dialogwindow
as parameter to the functions it calls.

>>> That is, the dialog which is first set to be trancient for the main
>>> window, is shown on top of any dialog which is created later.
>>>
>>> Which is not what i want, i want the error message dialog to be
>>> shown on top.
>>>
>>> Is there some way to get which dialogs are trancient for a window,
>>> or do i have to build some kind of system which keeps track of what
>>> dialogs are currently shown
>>>     
>>
>> If you show a modal dialog, it means that you should not be able to
>> access the application elsewhere before closing this dialog. It is
>> probably best for you to set error dialog transient to the modal dialog.
>> You might want to pass the window as parameter to the function that pops
>> up the dialog so it can be changed easily.
>>   
>
> All of my dialogs take the parent dialog as a pointer. The problem is
> of scale, i have too many windows to manually write switch case or
> some other structure to select the correct parent from somewhere.
>
It should not be this complex. If would help if you would tell what the
program tries to actually do and why you need to display error dialog in
the first place from another 'subsystem'?



// Tapani Pälli

-- 
Software Engineer
Open Source Software Operations