Data Handling

Data Types

EditTable can handle a variety of data sources and data types. Each column has an associated data type that can be set using resource XmNcolumnDataTypeData or function XintEditTableDefineColumnFormat. If no column type has been specified, the default applies. This is set with resource XmNdefaultColumnDataType.

Data values in a table can be any of the following types:

For these data types, the data format must be uniform within a column. However, EditTable also supports the pointer data type which lets you use composite data in applications (see next section).

Data Formatting

The formatting of the cell data into a string is done automatically based on the data type specified for each column (see resources XmNdefaultColumnDataFormat and XmNcolumnDataFormatData).

The application should make sure that the data format and data type are compatible for each column. The application can also use the callback XmNformatCellCallback to specify non standard formats (for examples, to represent negative numbers inside brackets).

EditTable also supports the storage of pointer (XintTYPE_POINTER) data where the formatting of the cell is done via the callback XmNformatCellCallback only.

The table can be populated on a per cell basis, using function XintEditTableFillCell or on a column basis using function XintEditTableFillColumn.

Flexible Data Handling

By default, EditTable makes a copy of the data. This behavior can be disabled by setting the resource XmNuseOriginalData to True at widget creation time. For example, you could have a table directly access the same memory area as a displayed plot, so that any changes to the plot would immediately update the table and vice versa.

Dataless Tables

EditTable table supports a column type XintTYPE_NONE where the table will request its data as a string, via the callback XmNformatCellCallback. In this last case, changes in the data should be notified to the EditTable using the function XintEditTableUpdateDataDisplay.