Creating a Canvas and Icons With Xfig Topic:Usage   Date: 2006-10-26 Printer Friendly:   Mobile View:

One feature that spans Windows, GTK 2 (GNU/Linux), and Mac OS X is that the background image of a window can be dynamically changed. It is possible to control an application by placing icons on the canvas and use the X/Y coordinates of mouse clicks to respond appropriately. Further, the mode of the application can be signified by the same means. Here is a screenshot of the application running as an example:



For the application and other details, see this site:

Mountain Climbing Journal

The green box around the window means there are no unsaved entries in progress. The icons are also embedded in the background canvas. This can be done quite easily with Xfig by creating a library of icons and placing the icons on the canvas. Create the individual icons first, and put them in a subdirectory where your other Xfig libraries are kept. For instance:

srv-5:~/xf usr4$ ls /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xfig/Libraries/mcj/ export.fig new.fig person.fig thing.fig time.fig mountain.fig ok.fig place.fig thumb.fig x.fig srv-5:~/xf usr4$

Use the library button in Xfig to select the correct icon and place it on the canvas:



Here is a collection of the above fig files.

The above method was the prettiest and most compatible across the three platforms that I could come up with to control this application.