layout Module

Widget description

This is a container widget that takes a standard Edje design file and wraps it very thinly in a widget.

An Edje design (theme) file has a very wide range of possibilities to describe the behavior of elements added to the Layout. Check out the Edje documentation and the EDC reference to get more information about what can be done with Edje.

Just like List, Box, and other container widgets, any object added to the Layout will become its child, meaning that it will be deleted if the Layout is deleted, move if the Layout is moved, and so on.

The Layout widget can contain as many Contents, Boxes or Tables as described in its theme file. For instance, objects can be added to different Tables by specifying the respective Table part names. The same is valid for Content and Box.

The objects added as child of the Layout will behave as described in the part description where they were added. There are 3 possible types of parts where a child can be added:

Content (SWALLOW part)

Only one object can be added to the SWALLOW part (but you still can have many SWALLOW parts and one object on each of them). Use the Object.content_set/get/unset functions to set, retrieve and unset objects as content of the SWALLOW. After being set to this part, the object size, position, visibility, clipping and other description properties will be totally controlled by the description of the given part (inside the Edje theme file).

One can use size_hint_ functions on the child to have some kind of control over its behavior, but the resulting behavior will still depend heavily on the SWALLOW part description.

The Edje theme also can change the part description, based on signals or scripts running inside the theme. This change can also be animated. All of this will affect the child object set as content accordingly. The object size will be changed if the part size is changed, it will animate move if the part is moving, and so on.

Box (BOX part)

An Edje BOX part is very similar to the Elementary Box widget. It allows one to add objects to the box and have them distributed along its area, accordingly to the specified layout property (now by layout we mean the chosen layouting design of the Box, not the Layout widget itself).

A similar effect for having a box with its position, size and other things controlled by the Layout theme would be to create an Elementary Box widget and add it as a Content in the SWALLOW part.

The main difference of using the Layout Box is that its behavior, the box properties like layouting format, padding, align, etc. will be all controlled by the theme. This means, for example, that a signal could be sent to the Layout theme (with signal_emit()) and the theme handled the signal by changing the box padding, or align, or both. Using the Elementary Box widget is not necessarily harder or easier, it just depends on the circumstances and requirements.

The Layout Box can be used through the box_ set of functions.

Table (TABLE part)

Just like the Box, the Layout Table is very similar to the Elementary Table widget. It allows one to add objects to the Table specifying the row and column where the object should be added, and any column or row span if necessary.

Again, we could have this design by adding a Table widget to the SWALLOW part using part_content_set(). The same difference happens here when choosing to use the Layout Table (a TABLE part) instead of the Table plus SWALLOW part. It’s just a matter of convenience.

The Layout Table can be used through the table_ set of functions.

Another interesting thing about the Layout widget is that it offers some predefined themes that come with the default Elementary theme. These themes can be set by theme, and provide some basic functionality depending on the theme used.

Most of them already send some signals, some already provide a toolbar or back and next buttons.

These are available predefined theme layouts. All of them have class = layout, group = application, and style = one of the following options:

• toolbar-content - application with toolbar and main content area
• toolbar-content-back - application with toolbar and main content area with a back button and title area
• toolbar-content-back-next - application with toolbar and main content area with a back and next buttons and title area
• content-back - application with a main content area with a back button and title area
• content-back-next - application with a main content area with a back and next buttons and title area
• toolbar-vbox - application with toolbar and main content area as a vertical box
• toolbar-table - application with toolbar and main content area as a table

This widget emits the following signals:

• theme,changed - The theme was changed.
• language,changed - the program’s language changed

class efl.elementary.layout.Layout

Bases: efl.elementary.layout_class.LayoutClass

This is the class that actually implements the widget.