Volume 6A: Motif Programming Manual

label = XtVaCreateManagedWidget ("name",

xmLabelGadgetClass, parent,

resource−value−list,

NULL);

12.1.2 Text Labels

A Label widget or gadget can display either text or an image. The XmNlabelType resource controls the type of

label that is displayed; the resource can be set to XmSTRING or XmPIXMAP. The default value is XmSTRING, so if

you want to display text in a Label, you do not need to set this resource explicitly.

The resource that specifies the string that is displayed in a Label is XmNlabelString. The value for this resource

must be a Motif compound string; common C character strings are not allowed. The following code fragment shows

the appropriate way to specify the text for a Label:

Widget label;

XmString str = XmStringCreateLocalized ("A Label");

label = XtVaCreateManagedWidget ("label",

xmLabelWidgetClass, parent,

XmNlabelString, str,

NULL);

XmStringFree (str);

If the XmNlabelString resource is not specified, the Label automatically converts its name into a compound

string and uses that as its label. Therefore, the previous example could also be implemented as follows:

Widget label;

label = XtVaCreateManagedWidget ("A Label",

xmLabelWidgetClass, parent,

NULL);

This method of specifying the label string for the widget is much simpler than using a compound string. It avoids the

overhead of creating and destroying a compound string, which is expensive in terms of allocating and freeing

memory. The problem with the name of the widget shown above is that it is illegal as a widget ...