Re: [MACTCL] tkAqua control sizes

[Jim I. <ji...@ap...>]

Vince,

On Apr 26, 2004, at 2:00 AM, Vince Darley wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Jim Ingham wrote:
> [good arguments for using fonts to specify tiny vs small vs big 
> controls]
>
> Ok, so you've convinced me that it would be convenient and good to have
> control sizes depend on fonts.  I'll file an RFE on sourceforge so this
> doesn't disappear in the coming months.
>
>> But again, I wouldn't do this with a button in general because I might
>> then clip the button text.  If I wanted to reduce the height of a
>> button I would just use a smaller font.  So I think figuring out how 
>> to
>> trigger off the font size would be better.
>
> That's a perfectly fine argument, but what do you suggest _should_ 
> happen
> if _someone_ (not you, since you obviously never do this) decides
> to configure the height of a button/menubutton/checkbutton/etc?  
> (Either
> directly or by using appropriate place/grid/pack commands which have 
> the
> same effect). (*)
>
> Can you explain what you think should happen?  As I see it there are 
> two
> options:
>
> (i) we make the control small/tiny (as with the scrollbar)
>
> (ii) we simply crop the control (starting from the bottom-right 
> corner, I
> suppose)
>
> It seems logical to me, especially given what happens on X11/Windows, 
> that
> we implement (i), since that will result, in general, in a more 
> pleasing
> gui-appearance, even for those who don't use Tk as we might all like 
> them
> to.  However, perhaps you would argue we should do (ii) to force people
> to change their ways?

It's been a while since I worked on X11 Tk, but IIRC if you do:

button .b -text FOO
place .b -x 10 -y 10 -height 8

Tk won't shrink the system font to fix in 8 pixels, it will just clip 
the button.  After all, place doesn't negotiate the size of the widget. 
  That at least used to be what happens.  It that different now?

Grid & pack are different, I think they keep the button frame intact & 
just clip the text, right?  We can try to do this by progressively 
using smaller buttons, but we are eventually going to lose.  Just like 
in Tk if you specify a borderwidth for a button, and then make it too 
small for the borders to fit, you are pretty much hosed here...

If this were easy to do, I think trying to do (i) would be an admirable 
design.  I am not sure how easy that would be to do.

Jim



>
> cheers,
>
> Vince.
>
> (*) I should add that I think this is quite likely to occur in
> practice, because Aqua controls are bigger than on most platforms, and 
> so
> people trying to use X11 or Win Tk applications on TkAqua may well run
> into these issues whenever a user-interface hasn't been laid out in the
> most flexible fashion.  Alphatk's dialogs (as of 6 months ago -- 
> they've
> been fixed now) are a case in point -- if I'd known there were multiple
> control sizes back then, I might have made more direct experimentation!
>
>
>
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--
Jim Ingham                                   ji...@ap...
Developer Tools
Apple Computer