This is the base class of the widget hierarchy. Everything in GtkAda inherits from this class Gtk_Object, except for a few structures in the Gdk.* packages (low-level drawing routines).
This class provides a set of handful features that you can choose to reuse in your applications:
Note that a lot of functions provided in the C interface are not provided here. They are used to emulate an object-oriented language in C, which can of course be done much more conveniently in Ada. Therefore most of these functions are not needed.
Here is a brief explanation on how the reference counting and destruction process work. You should not have to understand all this to use GtkAda, but it might help anyway.
When an object (descendant of Gtk.Object) is created, it has initially a ref_count of 1. A flag is set to say the object is "floating". See the Flags functions in this package for how to retrieve the status of this flag.
When the object gets a parent (ie Gtk.Widget.Set_Parent is called, possibly from other subprograms like Gtk.Container.Add, Gtk.Box.Pack_Start, ...), the ref_count of the object is incremented to 2. If the object was still "floating", it is also "sinked", ie its ref_count is decremented to 1, and the "floating" flag is cleared.
The same behavior as above happens when the object is registered as a top-level widget (i.e. we know it won't have any parent).
Thus the normal life cycle of an object is to have a ref_count to 1, and not be a "floating" object.
When the object is destroyed, the following happens: A temporary reference to the object is created (call to Ref), and ref_count to 2. The object is shutdown: It is removed from its parent (if any), and its ref_count is decremented to 1. The "destroy" signal is emitted, the user's handlers are called, and then all the handlers connected to the object are destroyed. The object is unref-ed. If its ref_count goes down to 0 (normal case), the memory used by the object and its user_data is freed.
Widget Hierarchy |
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GObject (see section Package Glib.Object) Gtk_Object (see section Package Gtk.Object) |
Signals |
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Subprograms |
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procedure Sink (Object : access Gtk_Object_Record); | ||
Sink the object. | ||
procedure Destroy (Object : access Gtk_Object_Record); | ||
Destroy the object. | ||
function Get_Type return Gtk.Gtk_Type; | ||
Return the internal value associated with a Gtk_Object internally.
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function Get_Type (Object : access Gtk_Object_Record) return Gtk_Type; | ||
This function is now obsolete, and is temporarily kept for backward | ||
Flags | ||
Each object is associated with a set of flags, that reports the state
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function Flags (Object : access Gtk_Object_Record) return Guint32; | ||
Return the flags that are set for the object, as a binary mask.
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procedure Set_Flags (Object : access Gtk_Object_Record; Flags : Guint32); | ||
Set some specific flags for the object. | ||
procedure Unset_Flags (Object : access Gtk_Object_Record; Flags : Guint32); | ||
Unset some specific flags for the object. | ||
function Flag_Is_Set (Object : access Gtk_Object_Record; Flag : Guint32) return Boolean; | ||
Return True if the specific flag Flag is set for the object.
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function In_Destruction_Is_Set (Object : access Gtk_Object_Record'Class) return Boolean; | ||
Test if the Destroyed flag is set for the object.
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function Floating_Is_Set (Object : access Gtk_Object_Record'Class) return Boolean; | ||
Test if the Floating flag is set for the object.
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