1. Questions about IDE and perhaps Win32Lib
Hi All
I have been having great fun with IDE and Win32Lib.
1. One thing that I have found is that it is difficult to know in advance
how things will fit in a window with lots of controls, and with multi-tabs
the problem can be even greater. Big ask coming up ...
Ideally I would like to be able to cut and paste a control (especially a
group control) from one tab to another (BTW the tabs are virtually full
window size). I cannot find any way to achieve this inside IDE so this
might be a request for a new feature. If such a feature is considered it
might possibly be useful to allow multiple pastes (haven't actually had a
need for this - just a simple MOVE is all that I really need) in which
case the control numbering would need to be adjusted each time after the
first.
2. I cannot understand what a ReBar is, can someone please explain to me.
3. In Win32Lib a control can be declared as EITHER a number of pixels OR a
proportion of the parent size e.g. .25 for a quarter. I tried to do this
also in IDE but it didn't work. Is it possible to do this in IDE?
My problem is that I am designing for a 1024x768 screen size but want to
be able to have it work on any screen size and for everything to scale
correctly. I don't mind calculating the correct font sizes etc myself.
How do other people deal with this? I see some windows that when resized a
big gray area appears which is pretty useless.
One thought that I had was to use say an 8 grid on 1024x768 and this could
rescale to 6 or 10 or 12 for other screen sizes without any odd fractions
developing. Fonts would also be changed by the same proportions so that
the text filled buttons equally.
The problem is that if a window has fonts suitable for a 800x600 screen
size then the fonts are far to small on a 1280x960 screen size and if the
font size is increased then the buttons will also need to be larger (in
pixels).
Ray Tomes
2. Re: Questions about IDE and perhaps Win32Lib
On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 19:52:16 +1200 (06/24/03 17:52:16)
, Ray Tomes <rtomes at ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
>
> Hi All
>
> I have been having great fun with IDE and Win32Lib.
Yeah, so have I 
[snip]
>
> 2. I cannot understand what a ReBar is, can someone please explain to me.
It is a Resizable Toolbar. See the demo\rebar.exw example with comes with
the win32lib library.
> 3. In Win32Lib a control can be declared as EITHER a number of pixels OR
> a proportion of the parent size e.g. .25 for a quarter. I tried to do
> this also in IDE but it didn't work. Is it possible to do this in IDE?
Win32lib also allows for some other predefined placement parameters, such
as Center, w32Edge, w32AltEdge too.
> My problem is that I am designing for a 1024x768 screen size but want to
> be able to have it work on any screen size and for everything to scale
> correctly. I don't mind calculating the correct font sizes etc myself.
>
> How do other people deal with this? I see some windows that when resized
> a big gray area appears which is pretty useless.
This is never an easy thing to do. The basic trick is to keep the 'normal'
layout simple so that when you have to resize things, there is not much to
do and very little interactoin between controls. It is not normal to alter
the font sizes though.
--
cheers,
Derek Parnell
3. Re: Questions about IDE and perhaps Win32Lib
On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 19:52:16 +1200, Ray Tomes <rtomes at ihug.co.nz>
wrote:
>My problem is that I am designing for a 1024x768 screen size but want to=
=20
>be able to have it work on any screen size and for everything to scale=20
>correctly. I don't mind calculating the correct font sizes etc myself.
>
>How do other people deal with this? I see some windows that when resized=
a=20
>big gray area appears which is pretty useless.
I did a little of this in MEditor, mainly because it had been
developed on different monitor & font size settings. It took a fair
amount of fiddling, even though as you might imagine, a text editor
has only a few pop-up windows and most are relatively trivial.
As with performance optimisation, it is not a bad idea to get the
whole thing working first, on your basic settings.
Maybe later in the project, spend a week developing in each of the
other resolutions you need to support.
Some code for font size detection, if you don't know:
integer lf -- use large fonts
object hdc, iDPI
lf =3D 0
hdc =3D getDC(Screen)
iDPI =3D w32Func( xGetDeviceCaps, {hdc, LOGPIXELSX} )
releaseDC(hdc)
--DEV should just be >96?
if iDPI =3D 120 then
lf=3D1
end if
Yes, that little reminder has been in the code now for about 18
months The windows eventually ended up something like:
constant
COLOUROPTIONS =3D create( Window, "Colour Options", MAIN, 120, 70,
450+lf*50, 400+lf*100,WStyle),
COLOURGROUP =3D create( Group, "Colour", COLOUROPTIONS, 5, 5,
255+lf*25, 170, 0 ),
EUPHORIAWORDS =3D create( List, "Elements", COLOURGROUP, 10,
15+lf*5, 85+lf*25, 150, 0 ),
FONTGROUP =3D create( Group, "Fontsize", COLOUROPTIONS, 270+lf*25,
5, 65+lf*6, 95, 0 ),
etc..
Messy, is it not? And not IDE friendly. Well, anyway, that's what I
did. Let me know if you have any better ideas.
Pete
4. Re: Questions about IDE and perhaps Win32Lib
> Ray Tomes wrote:
>>My problem is that I am designing for a 1024x768 screen size but
>>want to be able to have it work on any screen size and for
>>everything to scale correctly.
Jerry Story wrote:
> My solution to that problem was:
>
> 1. K = <Get the screen resolution.>
>
> 2. Write a little function "mK()" that adjusts things to the screen
> resolution.
>
> 3. Run all sizes and all positions of all widgets thru mK().
>
> For an example see any one of most of my programs under user
> contributions.
Jerry that is the approach that I would take if not using IDE. But I don't
see how to do that because IDE expects integers in these things and not
variables I think (or am I just assuming that?).
I can achieve the same as you say if I take the code generated by IDE and
replace all occurrences of x, y, cx, and cy by a scaling in the way you
say and do the fonts at the same time. Only disadvantage is that I cannot
then go back and make changes with IDE any more. So best to do this when I
am really sure that I finished all the fancy screen footwork.
Jonas wrte:
>If you're just interested in control placement/alignment then I would
>suggest looking at Don Phillip's xControls library (in the archive)
>which automatically adjusts size and placement for controls in a window
>when it's resized.
Thanks Jonas - I just finished trying to learn EUwinGUI, window developer,
Win32Lib and IDE - how many more do I need to learn? LOL! 
Ray
5. Re: Questions about IDE and perhaps Win32Lib
Derek Parnell wrote:
>> 2. I cannot understand what a ReBar is, can someone please explain to me.
> It is a Resizable Toolbar. See the demo\rebar.exw example with comes
> with the win32lib library.
Thanks Derek
Ray
