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From: morreale@bierstadt.scd.ucar.EDU (Peter Morreale)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Writing text to a widget
Message-ID: <9102060350.AA05278@bierstadt.scd.ucar.EDU>
Date: 6 Feb 91 03:50:40 GMT
References: <1991Feb6.015649.28798@agate.berkeley.edu>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder, CO
Lines: 44

In article <1991Feb6.015649.28798@agate.berkeley.edu> you write:
>
> this is probably easy to do, but i am having a great deal of trouble trying
>to implement it.  i would like to output information to the user (much as
>one would  do with printf statements) and have it displayed in a widget,
>any widget.  the Athena text widget is much more than i need.  how does one
>write a string of text to a widget, and continue to write strings on
>successive lines as they become appropriate?
>
>thanx,
>bruce
>(brp@bandit.berkeley.edu)

Sounds like you actually have two requests here.  One for a simple
widget to display messages, and another for a widget for appending text.

What I use for simple one line informative messages is a label widget.
It is intended for output strings only (no editing of the string) and I
get to have the string auto-centered.  To set the label:

	     XtSetArg(arg, XtNlabel, "string");
	     XtSetValues( <widget>, arg, 1);

You can also "clear" the widget by setting the string to a null string:

	     XtSetArg(arg, XtNlabel, "");

For the second, still use the text widget, but check out the 
routines:  XawTextSourceRead(), XawTextSourceReplace().  These functions 
allow you to read and replace (or append) portions of the text buffer.

I haven't used these functions directly, so I cannot send any code
samples...

Hope this helps,
-PWM

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