XtNameToWidget(3)

💖 XtNameToWidget — bestie edition 💖

okay so this is XtNameToWidget from the XT FUNCTIONS corner of the X world (the manual is literally called XtNameToWidget(3), iykyk), and it's all about translating strings to widgets, or widgets to windows. two little glow-up functions, one page. let's get into it 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

XtNameToWidget, XtWindowToWidget — translating strings to widgets or widgets to windows 💫

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🌸 SYNTAX 🌸

#include <X11/Intrinsic.h>

Widget XtNameToWidget(Widget reference, const char *names);

Widget XtWindowToWidget(Display *display, Window window);

like, that's the whole vibe. two calls, both returning a Widget. periodt. 💅

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🎀 ARGUMENTS 🎀

• display — specifies the display on which the window is defined. yes bestie, the display. the whole screen situation. 🖥️
• names — specifies the fully qualified name of the desired widget. fully qualified, okay, not the nickname. the whole path. 👑
• reference — specifies the widget from which the search is to start. your starting point, your home base, your main character. 🏠
• window — specify the window for which you want the widget. (yes it says "specify" instead of "specifies" in the original, we love a little inconsistency, no notes 🙈)

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

okay so XtNameToWidget — here's the tea 🍵. It looks for a widget whose name is the first component in the specified names, and that widget has to be a pop-up child of reference — or a normal child if reference is a subclass of compositeWidgetClass. literally that's the rule.

then it takes that widget it just found, makes it the new reference, and repeats the whole search — but first it deletes the first component from the specified names. so it's like, walking down the name path one step at a time, slay. and if it cannot find the specified widget? XtNameToWidget returns NULL. 😭 rip.

note bestie: the names argument contains the name of a widget with respect to the specified reference widget — and it can contain more than one widget name (separated by periods) for widgets that are not direct children of the specified reference widget. so like "a.b.c" energy. 🦋

now the spicy part 🌶️ — if more than one child of the reference widget matches the name, XtNameToWidget can return any of the children. the Intrinsics do not require that all children of a widget have unique names. so yeah, duplicate names are a thing, it's giving chaos, and it's allowed. 💀

and if the specified names contain more than one component and more than one child matches the first component, XtNameToWidget can return NULL if the single branch that it follows does not contain the named widget. translation: it does not back up and follow other matching branches of the widget tree. it picks one branch and commits. no going back, no second chances, no take-backs. it said what it said. 🙅♀️

then we have XtWindowToWidget — this one translates the specified window and display pointer into the appropriate widget instance. that's it. simple. iconic. a little reverse-lookup moment. ✨

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• X Toolkit Intrinsics - C Language Interface
• Xlib - C Language X Interface

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aaaand that's the page bestie!! go forth and find your widgets 🫶 X Version 11, libXt 1.3.1, and yeah it's the XtNameToWidget(3) page — mwah, love that for us. 💖✨🎀