Re: XForms: Future xforms development

From: Reed Riddle (drriddle@qwest.net)
Date: Fri Dec 13 2002 - 21:40:31 EST

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    # To subscribers of the xforms list from "Reed Riddle" <drriddle@qwest.net> :

    Howdy all,

    > 4. Better resizing support. Or do I not know enough? I briefly looked
    > at the gravity stuff quite some time ago and decided there was too
    > much to learn for a 1.0 or 2.0 product, so I put it aside. Is it easy?
    > Is this my problem, a problem in the documentation, or does the
    > resizing
    > issue need better treatment in the api?

    Actually, it works pretty well now (1.0R6.1, haven't installed 1.0
    yet), but I was having problems with it in one of the earlier
    revisions. The key is to decide what should resize on the form, and
    what shouldn't; buttons shouldn't, but things like plots should (or
    can). fl_set_form_minsize and _maxsize can be used to set the form
    resize limits (and set them to the same values for no resizing).

    Gravity just means how the object will move. Imagine your form as a
    map (N up, S down, E right, W left). How you set the two gravity
    values determines how things move. So, if you have a button in the
    lower right corner, setting the gravity to (SE,SE) will keep the button
    in the same place relative to the corner. Anything set (NE,SW) will
    expand with the form, and you can limit things in only one direction
    ((S,S) will keep things in position up/down but let the move
    left/right). Once you get it down for one form, it's easy to port it
    to the next; the best way to test it is to increase the form to fill
    the screen (usually a menu bar widget does this under X), and see if
    things do what you expect.

    What I have found is that each object just requires a RESIZE option and
    a gravity statement; if you group objects, then the group can be
    assigned these properties (i.e. not for each individual object). It's
    not hard to add these on, and refitting old programs is pretty
    straightforward as well (I'm doing some refitting right now).

                                            Reed

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Dr. Reed L. Riddle
    Associate Director of Whole Earth Telescope Operations
    Iowa State University Department of Physics & Astronomy
    Email: drriddle@qwest.net
    Homepage: http://www3.iitap.iastate.edu/~riddle/

    "This life has been a test. If it had been an actual life, you would
      have received actual instructions on where to go and what to do."
                                     -- Angela Chase, "My so-called life"

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