Text Widgets

There are two basic widgets available for rendering simple text. The one is for displaying non-editable text GtkLabel the other is for editable text GtkEntry.

Label

A GtkLabel is the most basic text widget that has already been used behind the scene in any previous example involving a GtkButton. A GtkLabel is constructed by calling

label = GtkLabel("My text")

The text of a label can be changed using

GAccessor.text(label,"My other text")

Furthermore, a label has limited support for adding formatted text. This is done using the markup function:

GAccessor.markup(label,"""<b>My bold text</b>\n
                          <a href=\"https://www.gtk.org\"
                          title=\"Our website\">GTK+ website</a>""")

The syntax for this markup text is borrowed from html and explained here.

A label can be made selectable using

GAccessor.selectable(label,true)

This can be used if the user should be allowed to copy the text.

The justification of a label can be changed in the following way:

GAccessor.justify(label,Gtk.GConstants.GtkJustification.RIGHT)

Possible values of the enum GtkJustification are LEFT,RIGHT,CENTER, and FILL.

Automatic line wrapping can be enabled using

GAccessor.text(label,repeat("Very long text! ",20))
GAccessor.line_wrap(label,true)

Note that this will only happen, if the size of the widget is limited using layout constraints.

Entry

The entry widget allows the user to enter text. The entered text can be read and write using

ent = GtkEntry()
set_gtk_property!(ent,:text,"My String")
str = get_gtk_property(ent,:text,String)

The maximum number of characters can be limited using set_gtk_property!(ent,:max_length,10).

Sometimes you might want to make the widget non-editable. This can be done by a call

# using the accessor methods
GAccessor.editable(GtkEditable(ent),false)
# using the property system
set_gtk_property!(ent,:editable,false)

If you want to use the entry to retrieve passwords you can hide the visibility of the entered text. This can be achieve by calling

set_gtk_property!(ent,:visibility,false)

To get notified by changes to the entry one can listen the "changed" event.

TODO: setting progress and setting icons in entry

Search Entry

A special variant of the entry that can be used as a search box is GtkSearchEntry. It is equipped with a button to clear the entry.