Why GTK visual designer uses "pack" system to arrange widget ?

Question

I'm a "classical" programmer, with "classical" RAD system. I would like to "migrate" to monodevelop to deploy some application, but the first big "mountains" is to learn the "packing" system for design object. Why gtk (or mono) uses this system ?

Thanks

Answer 1

This gives you a brief overview. The main point is to not use fixed cordinates, but help you be independant of screen sizes.

Answer 2

Flexibility : packing widgets allows the automatic resizing and other nifty things. There are a number of options as to how your widgets should be packed.

Portability : with a packing scheme you're less dependant on the rendering engine (X11, win32...) .(I've not said "totally independant")

See the GTK tutorial to learn about packing and table packing in particular, it gives you exemples where packing is interesting :

http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk-tutorial/stable/x363.html