[Gtk-sharp-list] GDL - Docking documentation

[Darryl Pentz]

Hi John, Jeroen, (and the list :)

I've been poking around in the GDL code a fair bit and I must say I still
find it quite a challenge getting to grips with all the relationships and
keeping tabs on all the behaviour (events etc) during a
dock/undock/iconify/uniconify activity. To this simple mind it is quite
complex.

One test case I'm trying to get working right now is to have a Dock and a
DockBar in an HBox; the Dock in on one side and the DockBar on the other.
When the DockItem (which contains a TextView) that I add to the Dock is
iconified, obviously the item is then represented as a button in the
DockBar. When I click on that button to 'uniconify' it, I want it to
reappear in that initial Dock. However, I can't seem to get my mind around
how this is done, as I can see that the DockItem, once iconified, now has
the DockPlacement.Floating attribute, and not the DockPlacement.Center
attribute I initially gave it. And when I 'uniconify' it, it is then
rendered in a new Dock item which is floating.

I know it has to do with the fact that a DockPlaceholder is created and
attached to the DockItem when it is iconified. What I am unclear on is the
correct (or intended) behaviour of this placeholder, given that you mention
in the README that the placeholder code hasn't been done yet. So is it
currently broken, or is it incomplete? As I step through the GDL code as it
runs, I don't know whether what I am observing is correct or broken. Also,
why is the placeholder a DockObject, rather than simply a record of 'where
was this dock item before it was iconified/closed'?

Can anybody elaborate a bit on how DockPlaceholder is meant to work?

I'm clearly missing something, I know. Looking at how you use it in
MonoDevelop, it seems like you control it completely manually in
MonoDevelop, whereas the way I'm using it seems to be automatically managed
by GDL and I can't see how to do it any other way. Certainly the MonoDevelop
code doesn't seem to be doing anything that I'm not doing (or have tried
doing).

thanks,
Darryl