Re: [Pythoncard-users] Idea/suggestion for sizers

[Dan S. <py...@da...>]

At 03:38 PM 4/30/2002 +0100, Simon Willison wrote:
>At 12:44 30/04/02 +0100, Simon Willison wrote:
>>The simplest way of allowing a user to create a resizable component would 
>>seem to be to allow the user to specify the component's dimensions as a 
>>percentage rather than a fixed width in pixels (similar to how tables and 
>>divs can be sized in HTML). I don't know how feasible it is to combine 
>>fixed-relative-to-corner positioning with 
>>take-up-as-90%-of-available-space positioning but from a resourceEditor 
>>user perspective the two combined could create a very powerful but easy 
>>to use interface for creating resizable documents.
>
>I've thought about this a bit more and percentages may not be the best way 
>to do this. In most situations I (as an end user) would rather just select 
>a component and instruct it to expand either vertically, horizontally or 
>both to fill any available space. Combine that with 
>positioning-relative-to-corners and simple applications (such as my 
>ScratchPad program) would have all of the basic sizer functionality needed 
>to handle resizing.

I'd expand the idea just a teeny bit and talk about relative to 
borders/edges rather than just corners. A layout with more than two 
components in the x or y direction would be pretty cumbersome to code and 
keep in synch with only corner anchors, methinks.

>Another thought: Rather than specify that a textarea should expand to fit 
>horizontally and take up as much horizontal space as possible for the sake 
>of aesthetics it would be preferable to be able to specify a "margin" on 
>the side that is being expanded. The definition of such a component might 
>look a little like this:
>
>{'type':'TextArea',
>     'name':'ScratchPadText',
>     'position':(0, 30),
>     'relative': 'top-left',
>     'size':('*', '*'),
>     'font':{'faceName': 'Courier New', 'family': 'monospace', 'size': 8},
>     'rightMargin': 8
>     'bottomMargin': 8
>     },
>
>The *s in the size tuple mean "expand horizontal" and "expand vertical". 
>The right margin and bottom margin are explicitly defined - this is the 
>space in pixels that should be left between that side of the component and 
>the border of the application (or the start of the next component anchored 
>on that side).
>
>Final thought: It would be useful if GUI designers could specify a 
>"smallest possible" size, after which the application can not be resized 
>any smaller (a similar effect can be seen in the Samples Launcher which 
>can not be shrunk below a certain size). This will prevent problems with 
>users resizing the application to the point where the position rules 
>defined for the widgets (with respect to corners of the application) cause 
>them to overlap each other.

I think this is an important feature. In fact, ultimately it would be way 
cool if there were a background/window property that basicallly prohibited 
the user from shrinking the window to a size too small to show all the 
components. A bit dictatorial, I know, but perhaps justified.

>I'm currently reading up on wxPython with the intent of hacking around 
>with the PythonCard prototype a bit at some point, but ion the meantime 
>(if no one minds) I'll keep throwing ideas at this list and see if any of 
>them stick ;)

Nobody here is going to mind you throwing ideas at the list! That's one of 
the big reasons it and we are here.

>Regards,
>
>Simon
>
>
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