GtkAdaQuoter

A "short-term" project to learn some GtkAda, while also obtaining a useful tool in the process. I even ended up contributing quite a bit of material based on this to the Ada Programming wikibook's section on GtkAda.

What it does

• Reads from a json-formatted file (currently hardcoded to ~/signatures/all_signatures.json).
  • Expects an array of quote objects.
  • For each object, expects a field for quotation, and optional fields for author, source, and speaker.
• Pops up a window with the quotes arranged in rows, different fields in columns.
• Allows one to:
  • add a row beneath the currently highlighted row;
  • delete the currently highlighted row;
  • save all the quotes to a file determined by a file chooser dialog.

To do

• Figure out how to wrap quotation text while editing the text.
• Improve Unicode character handling with more points, or bring in an external library.

Done!

• Add a file chooser dialog for opening the file.

• Add a "quit" button with mnemonic.

• Add icons to buttons. Figure out why buttons won't display icons.

  • Turns out this is due to a design decision by GTK developers, Who Know Better Than You (TM).

• Choose better default window dimensions.

• Decent behavior when the default input file isn't found.

• Decent behavior when the input file chooser dialog is canceled.

• Better default column widths. OBE by configuration file

• Enable a configuration file to remember:

  • column widths;
  • previously-used paths for opening, saving;
    • Decided to rely on usability of GTK's file chooser.
  • window dimensions.

• Enable a Ctrl-Q shortcut.

• Enable a Ctrl-W shortcut.

• Enable drag-and-drop reordering of quotes.

• Enable Unicode character handling for the characters I use most.

• Fix button alignment. Figure out why the button bar does not expand to window edges.

  • Turns out this is due to GTK's unintuitive GTK_Attach_Options. I managed to get it to hit the edges (see commented code) but it's not pretty.

• Fix the bug that arises when tabbing away from an active but un-edited cell.

  • Turns out GTK really wants the GTK_Tree_View to grab focus after setting the focus on a particular cell, and for some reason the Tab button doesn't do this properly.

• Fix the bug where closing the window raises GTK alarms.

• When editing is complete, enable automatic navigation to next cell.

• Wrap quotation text.

See also

The JsonQuoter submodule is used to obtain, manipulate, and store the quotes.

License

Public domain, insofar as this is compatible with the libraries used.