Using GtkFixed, although sometimes easier and sometimes useful for some things, is discouraged.
Why? Well that’s what I’m hoping to answer.
With GtkFixed, the following things will result in truncated text, overlapping widgets, and other display bugs:
- Themes, which may change widget sizes.
- Fonts other than the one you used to write the app will of course change the size of widgets containing text; keep in mind that users may use a larger font because of difficulty reading the default, or they may be using Windows or the framebuffer port of GTK+, where different fonts are available.
- Translation of text into other languages changes its size. Also, display of non-English text will use a different font in many cases.
GtkHBox
- GtkFixed
As you can see, the large font causes one button to bleed into the other.
In addition, the fixed widget can’t properly be mirrored in right-to-left languages such as Hebrew and Arabic. i.e. normally GTK+ will flip the interface to put labels to the right of the thing they label, but it can’t do that with GtkFixed. So your application will not be usable in right-to-left languages.
Finally, fixed positioning makes it kind of annoying to add/remove GUI elements, since you have to reposition all the other elements. This is a long-term maintenance problem for your application.
If you know none of these things are an issue for your application, and prefer the simplicity of GtkFixed, by all means use the widget. But you should be aware of the tradeoffs.
I hope that this will help you in your decisions regarding the use of GtkFixed.
I took all of my information from here.
