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From: pete@iris49.biosym.COM (Pete Ware)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Motif 1.1 problem with shells and XtRealize and XtUnrealize
Message-ID: <9106101647.AA16582@iris49.biosym.com>
Date: 10 Jun 91 16:47:17 GMT
References: <33913@shamash.cdc.com>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 42

dka> My application requires many windows to pop up in response to a
dka> selection from a menu bar. The windows that are popped up are too
dka> complex to use a pop up shell and XtPopup and XtPopdown.  ( It is
dka> my understanding that a pop up shell can only be the parent of
dka> one composite or simple widget. My pop up windows are neither of
dka> these. ) My solution to get around this was to create all "pop
dka> up" windows as children of topLevelShells or applicationShells.
dka> Then I could Realize and Unrealize the shells as they were
dka> needed.

I could be completely wrong, but I think you are completely missing
the point of using widgets.  A shell may only be able to hold one
child widget, but that child is free to contain as many children as it
implements (ad infinitum).  For example, a typical dialog box may have:

Shell
	 Pane
		ScrolledWindow
			Form
				label1 ... label_n
		RowColumn
			label1 ... label_n
		...
You can see the Shell only has one child.

dka> The problem is that consecutive calls to XtRealize and
dka> XtUnrealize do not work.  The widgets act like they are ignoring
dka> input after the second call to XtRealize the shell.

You really want to popdown the shells.  Also, you may need to wait
until returning to your event loop to get the second XtRealize to take
effect.  Also, I'm not sure how the Motif dialog shell's respond to
XtRealize/Unrealize while popped up.

dka> I do know that an option is to create and destroy the widgets dynamically
dka> instead of creating all widgets in the beginning of my programs execution.

It may be that the Motif dialog shells all pop themselves up whenever
the child is managed.  If you delay managing the shell until you want
to pop it up, things may work.

--pete