[wxDesigner] Using Designer to subclass my GUI objects other than dialogs

[Robert Roebling]

David Goldsmith wrote:

> Now for my present question.  I'm porting a native libraries code to 
> wxWidgets using wxDesigner to reproduce the GUI.  One of the features of 
> the old code is that the menu bar changes in response to the user 
> selecting certain menu bar items, but  it changes only a little, most of 
> it stays the same.  Leveraging wxDesigner, my first plan of attack was 
> to compose the main menu bar, then simply copy the whole thing and paste 
> it into a new menu bar object and add the additional material and then 
> swap out menu bars as appropriate in the main wxFrame.  However, I 
> realized the more OO thing to do would be to subclass the main menu bar, 
> adding additional members as needed (and still swapping out exactly 
> which class is being used for the menu at any given time in the app, of 
> course).

You are the first to ask to subclass wxMenubar and I'd say this
is never needed and doesn't make sense. You can modify a menubar
inplace by getting the wxMenuItems by ID. You can then add,
change and remove menu items as you like. As much as I like OO,
it doesn't make sense for every problem.

> I see that wxDesigner has a class-writing function for dialog objects, 
> but I don't see that functionality for any other objects.  Also, I 
> examined the code that Designer actually produces, and it does not 
> appear to be creating a class to encapsulate even my main menu bar.  Is 
> there a way to leverage Designer to help me perform the subclassing I 
> have described?

No, wxDesigner doesn't provide a way to subclass wxMenubar. I'd
probably create a single menubar with wxDesiger and instantiate
it twice (or more times) in your app, modifiying it as you need.
You can then swap out menubars as you described.

  Robert