Gtk Comfy

Gtk Comfy is an effort to improve GTK builder files. Whilst the separation between code and interface is a good one, but the implementation is poor. XML is tricky and obtuse:

Example

xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <interface> <object class="GtkApplicationWindow" id="window"> <property name="title">My GTK App</property> <child> <object class="GtkButton" id="button"> <property name="label">Press me!</property> <property name="margin-top">12</property> <property name="margin-bottom">12</property> <property name="margin-start">12</property> <property name="margin-end">12</property> </object> </child> </object> </interface>

So with GTK Comfy you can instead use any serde compatable format, as shown in the example below:

```yaml

The root interface

interface: # The class of the object (reserverd keyword) class: GtkApplicationWindow

# The id of the widget (reserved keyword) id: window

# The title property. See that properties are automatically infered title: My Gtk App

# The children children: - class: GtkButton id: Button label: Press me! margin-start: "12" margin-top: "12" margin-bottom: "12" margin-end: "12" ```

Features

Gtk Comfy provides many convinience features, such as:

• Inferred properties, if it does not recognise a variable it will infer it as a property (see the title in the above example.)
• Child types, if a widget is given the child_type property than you can set the child type (I can’t remember when you need this but you do.)
• Pango Attributes. For labels (and suchlike) you can use attributes to provide a map of attributes (example below.)
• Style classes, provided in a style array.
• Grids, support for layout in children.
• Translation domain for interface.
• Translations

Examples

Use in rust

Put something along these lines in your build script:

```rust use std::fs;

// Load the UI. let interface: gtkcomfy::Interface = serdeyaml::fromstr(includestr!("ui.yaml"))?;

// Write it as xml. fs::write( "ui.xml", interface.to_string(), )?; ```

Attributes

yaml class: GtkLabel label: "This is a red label" attributes: foreground: '#FF0000'

Styles

```yaml class: GtkBox orientation: "horizontal" style: - linked children:

...

```

Grids

yaml class: GtkGrid id: grid children: - class: GtkButton id: button1 label: Button 1 layout: column: 0 row: 0 - class: GtkButton id: button2 label: Button 2 layout: column: 1 row: 0 - class: GtkButton id: button3 label: Button 3 layout: column: 2 row: 0 row-span: 2 - class: GtkButton id: button4 label: Button 4 layout: column: 0 row: 1 column-span: 2

Translation domains

yaml domain: "whatever_this_value_does_i_have_no_idea_what_it_is" interface: class: GtkWindow #...

Translations

Translations can be done as follows:

yaml label: translatable: Save comment: For saving the state

Extensibility

If you need to extend it to add custom XML (because this app is not perfect) you can use the xml property:

yaml xml: <property name="label">