Most Motif widgets have specific functions. A PushButton activates an action; a ScrollBar moves a scroll with respect to a viewport; a RowColumn contains a menu, a RadioBox or CheckBox, or a collection of widgets laid out in rows and columns. In contrast, DrawingArea does not have a specific function. It is useful for implementing a canvas, a specialized text editor, or other customized portions of an application.
This chapter takes a detailed look at some of the ways in which you can use DrawingArea in an application. Throughout this chapter, we focus on the draw.c example, which is stored online in the demos/programs/draw directory.