Ubuntu – How to make a Gtk.Iconview react to single click instead of double click

application-developmentgtkpython

I use a Gtk.IconView widget in my app to select different types of elements. The way the IconView works is the following:

Do one click to select the item
Do an additional double-click to activate the item

I've always found it confusing that an additional double click is needed, when most button-like widgets in the desktop just require a single click. Now I've just had feedback from a couple of users that find it confusing (someone thought it was a bug that clicking on the button "did nothing"), so I've decided to look into how to change that behaviour.

Ideally, I'd like the IconView to behave as follows:

Hover to select an item (optional)
Single-click activates the item

Now I haven't found anything obvious in the widget's properties to make it behave like that. Does anyone know how or if that could be achieved?

Gtk.IconView in action

Best Answer

One solution (but only for the single click activation) is of cause to use the selection_changed signal of the IconView (because the IconView selection is single click based).

A sample that assumes a working on_item_activated signal would be:

def on_icon_view_selection_changed(self, widget):
        self.on_item_activated(widget, widget.get_selected_items()[0])

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Really the way to go overall for user friendly GUI app development is Quickly. It gives you a workflow and several helper scripts to get you up and running fast and easy. It is however very opinionated on the software to use, eg for GUI it uses PyGTK.

My own experience from looking into the Python GUI frameworks is that there is no single best one. Some say wxPython is the way to go, others PyQT. However I believe a lot of the Ubuntu specific software is done using PyGTK.

Ubuntu – How to dynamically resize GTK notebook pages

I do not know a nice answer, but I have a work-around for you:

The basic idea is that you need a container widget as the parent widget in each page (do not place e.g. a label directly in the page), and you can hide/show everything except the container (If you hide the container as well, the page will disappear).

This solution should work for otherwise arbitrary widget hierarchies.

from gi.repository import Gtk

class NotebookWindow():
    def __init__(self):
        self.builder = Gtk.Builder()
        self.builder.add_from_file('notebook.ui')
        self.builder.get_object('window1').connect('delete-event',
            Gtk.main_quit)
        notebook = self.builder.get_object('notebook1')
        notebook.connect("switch-page", self.on_notebook1_switch_page)
        self.on_notebook1_switch_page(notebook, None,
                                      notebook.get_current_page())

    def on_notebook1_switch_page(self, widget, label, page):
        for p in range(widget.get_n_pages()):
            container = widget.get_nth_page(p)
            if not p == page:
                for c in container.get_children():
                    try:
                        c.hide_all()
                    except AttributeError:
                        c.hide()
            else:
                for c in container.get_children():
                    try:
                        c.show_all()
                    except AttributeError:
                        c.show()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    notebookwindow = NotebookWindow()
    Gtk.main()

In my original answer I recorded and re-instated the requested sizes. This does not work in general, because the requested size is only a minimal size. I would have to record a maximum size, in order for this to work, though.

Best Answer

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