Generic Function

Summary

Converts an abstract description of a layout's children into a list of objects.

Package

capi

Signature

interpret-description layout description interface => result

Arguments

layout

A layout.

description

A list, or other Lisp object accepted for some layout class.

interface

An interface.

Values

result

A list, each element being a simple-pane, a pinboard-object or a geometry object.

Description

The generic function interpret-description is used by the layout mechanism to translate an abstract description of layout 's children (supplied by the initarg :description or (setf layout-description)) into a list of objects to actually use. Each object must be either an element (an object of type simple-pane or of type pinboard-object) or a geometry object (the result of the default method of parse-layout-descriptor).

The default method specialized on layout expects description to be a list, and returns a list of the values returned by parse-layout-descriptor for each element. Some built-in subclasses of layout have their own methods, which allow different values of description . In these cases the manual page for the layout class describes what the description can be.

For example, column-layout expects as its description a list of items where each item in the list is either the slot-name of the child or a string which should be turned into a title pane. This is the default handling of a layout's description, which is done by calling the generic function parse-layout-descriptor to do the translation for each item.

You can define a method for your own layout class. The elements in the returned list must not be returned more than once for layouts that are displayed at the same time.

See also

parse-layout-descriptor
define-layout
layout
Laying Out CAPI Panes