LIBGLADE
========

Author: James Henstridge <james@daa.com.au>

This library allows you to load glade interface files in a program at
runtime.  It doesn't require GLADE to be used, but GLADE is by far the
easiest way to create the interface files.

For an idea of how to use the library, see test-libglade.c and
glade/glade-xml.h.

To compile, you will need the libxml2 package (aka the gnome-xml
module in CVS) which can be found on the GNOME FTP site or its
mirrors.  If you want GNOME support, you will also need the gnome-libs
package installed.


LIBGLADE INTERNALS
==================

If you are interested in how libglade works, here is a small
description:

When glade_xml_new is called, the XML file is loaded using libxml.
Libglade uses the SAX interface because it is faster and allows me to
store the data in a more compact representation.  The data in the XML
file is cached, so that if you load the interface again, the file does
not need to be reparsed.  If the file has changed though, it will be
reparsed.

Now glade_xml_build_widget is called for all the toplevel widgets in
the interface (or if the second argument to glade_xml_new was non
NULL, the widget it refers to is treated as the toplevel).

For each of these widgets, they are created by a function specific to
the widget type, and then glade_xml_build_widget is called for each
child widget, which is then packed into its parent.  This is done
recursively, so the whole interface is constructed.

New widget types are added to the widget class hash with the
glade_register_widgets function.  For an example, see the end of
glade-gtk.c.

The automatic signal connection system uses the introspective
capabilities of dynamic linking.  By openning a handle on NULL, we can
get at all the global symbols (global functions, global variables) in
the executable, and the libraries it is linked against.  This is used
to find the address of a signal handler from its name, so that
gtk_signal_connect can be called automatically for you.

Of course, there are other ways of connecting the signals if your
platform doesn't support this feature.