#GtkPaned has two panes, arranged either horizontally or vertically. The division between the two panes is adjustable by the user by dragging a handle.

Child widgets are added to the panes of the widget with gtk.paned.Paned.pack1 and gtk.paned.Paned.pack2. The division between the two children is set by default from the size requests of the children, but it can be adjusted by the user.

A paned widget draws a separator between the two child widgets and a small handle that the user can drag to adjust the division. It does not draw any relief around the children or around the separator. (The space in which the separator is called the gutter.) Often, it is useful to put each child inside a #GtkFrame with the shadow type set to gtk.types.ShadowType.In so that the gutter appears as a ridge. No separator is drawn if one of the children is missing.

Each child has two options that can be set, @resize and @shrink. If @resize is true, then when the #GtkPaned is resized, that child will expand or shrink along with the paned widget. If @shrink is true, then that child can be made smaller than its requisition by the user. Setting @shrink to false allows the application to set a minimum size. If @resize is false for both children, then this is treated as if @resize is true for both children.

The application can set the position of the slider as if it were set by the user, by calling gtk.paned.Paned.setPosition.

CSS nodes

paned
├── <child>
├── separator[.wide]
╰── <child>

GtkPaned has a main CSS node with name paned, and a subnode for the separator with name separator. The subnode gets a .wide style class when the paned is supposed to be wide.

In horizontal orientation, the nodes of the children are always arranged from left to right. So :first-child will always select the leftmost child, regardless of text direction.

Creating a paned widget with minimum sizes.

GtkWidget *hpaned = gtk_paned_new (GTK_ORIENTATION_HORIZONTAL);
GtkWidget *frame1 = gtk_frame_new (NULL);
GtkWidget *frame2 = gtk_frame_new (NULL);
gtk_frame_set_shadow_type (GTK_FRAME (frame1), GTK_SHADOW_IN);
gtk_frame_set_shadow_type (GTK_FRAME (frame2), GTK_SHADOW_IN);

gtk_widget_set_size_request (hpaned, 200, -1);

gtk_paned_pack1 (GTK_PANED (hpaned), frame1, TRUE, FALSE);
gtk_widget_set_size_request (frame1, 50, -1);

gtk_paned_pack2 (GTK_PANED (hpaned), frame2, FALSE, FALSE);
gtk_widget_set_size_request (frame2, 50, -1);