gtk.DrawingArea
gtk.DrawingArea — a widget for custom user interface elements.
Description
The gtk.DrawingArea
widget is used for creating custom user interface elements. It's essentially
a blank widget containing a gtk.gdk.Window
that
you can draw on. The contained gtk.gdk.Window
is
accessed using the gtk.Widget
"window"
attribute as:
gdkwindow = drawingarea.window
Since a gtk.gdk.Window
is a subclass of gtk.gdk.Drawable
,
all of the gtk.gdk.Drawable
methods are available for drawing on the gtk.DrawingArea
's
gdkwindow.
After creating a drawing area, the application may want to connect to:
Mouse and button press signals to respond to input from the user. Use the
gtk.Widget.add_events
() method to enable events you wish to receive. To receive keyboard events, you will need to set thegtk.CAN_FOCUS
flag on the drawing areaThe "realize" signal to take any necessary actions when the widget is instantiated on a particular display.
The "configure_event" signal to take any necessary actions when the widget changes size.
The "expose_event" signal to handle redrawing the contents of the widget when a drawing area first comes on screen, or when it's covered by another window and then uncovered (exposed). You can also force an expose event by adding to the "damage region" of the drawing area's window using the
gtk.Widget.queue_draw_area
() method.
See the Drawing
Area chapter in the tutorial for more information on using a gtk.DrawingArea
.
Sometimes a gtk.Image
is a useful
alternative to a drawing area. You can put a gtk.gdk.Pixmap
in
the gtk.Image
and draw to the gtk.gdk.Pixmap
,
calling the gtk.Widget.queue_draw
()
method on the gtk.Image
when you
want to refresh to the screen.