Question

The Evernote client has a nice feature that allows dragging links from Firefox into the Evernote edit window, which works with both bookmarks and links in the browser window. I’d like to add a similar feature to a PyGTK application. Here is what I tried so far (using Py 2.7.2 and PyGTK 2.24.0):

import pygtk
pygtk.require('2.0')
import gtk,pango

flags = gtk.TARGET_OTHER_APP
targets = [
    ('text/uri-list', flags, 0),
    ('text/plain', flags, 1),
    ('text/x-uri', flags, 2),
    ('text/x-moz-url', flags, 3),
    ('application/x-bookmark', flags, 4),
    ('application/x-mswinurl', flags, 5),
    ('application/x-desktop', flags, 6)]

def receive_data(wid, context, x, y, data, info, time):
    type = data.type
    url = data.data
    if info == 2:
        url = url.decode('utf-16')
    url = url.splitlines()[0]
    text = '%s\n%s' % (type, url)
    label.set_text(text)
    context.finish(True, False, time)

window = gtk.Window()
window.set_size_request(400, 80)

label = gtk.Label()
label.set_justify(gtk.JUSTIFY_CENTER)
label.set_ellipsize(pango.ELLIPSIZE_END)
window.add(label)

window.drag_dest_set(gtk.DEST_DEFAULT_ALL, targets,
    gtk.gdk.ACTION_COPY|gtk.gdk.ACTION_MOVE)

window.connect('drag_data_received', receive_data)
window.connect('destroy', lambda window: gtk.main_quit())

window.show_all()
gtk.main()

This works nicely under Linux: You can drag and drop a link or bookmark from Firefox to the GTK window and it displays the dragged URL. Unfortuntately, it does not work under Windows. I have tested with Windows 7. Here, the above application only accepts file links, but not Internet links from Firefox or other web browsers. Is it possible to make it work under Windows, too?

Answer 1

I’ve never seen inter-app GTK+ DnD work in Windows other than for dragging from Windows Explorer to a GTK+ app. You can test this using the drag targets demo from the PyGTK tutorial. (Even dragging from Explorer has some odd quirks, e.g. not triggering drag-motion.)

I think it’s just either very buggy or not implemented.