On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 10:12 PM, Chip Davis <c...@aviatrexx.com> wrote:
> ...
>
> One of my pet peeves as a user, however, are non-resizable windows
> that are ignorant of the current font size. Sometimes I use my laptop
> to drive a digital projector and need to use a much larger font than
> normal.
>
> Is there any valid reason for creating a non-resizable window?
>
> A second peeve is the resizable window that refuses to remember the
> size I had to drag it to the last time. Disk Defragmenter comes
> immediately to mind.
>
Interesting comments Chip. Your second peeve used to be a big one for me
too. But, I don't think about it much any more. I guess the apps I use
all the time now remember the size and position they were closed at.
Of the two, remembering the last size and position and opening the window
to that the next time is not real difficult. You just save the information
when you close and read it back when you start up.
In ooDialog's case, you can use the .Properties class provided by ooRexx to
save and read back the information. Making it even easier, you don't have
to write much saving / reading code.
Resizable dialogs are genuinely difficult, harder than a regular window to
some degree. With a regular window, the programmer has to write all the
drawing code for the window. Not that that isn't hard, but it has to be
done. So adding resizing to that code is not a lot of extra work.
With dialogs, the operating system, normally, handles all the drawing of
the both the dialog and the dialog controls. So adding resizability (if
that's a word) is a lot of additional work. Still, "a lot of additional
work" is precisely the problem frameworks are good at solving.
Applying the comments to ooDialog specifically. Lee Pendin wrote a
graphical version of rexxtry using ooDialog. This program is installed
with ooRexx. It is both resizable and opens up in its last size and
position. A demonstration that it is feasible to remove both of your pet
peeves.
Jon created two classes in ooDialog that handle most all of the work
of adding resizability to a dialog. It is some very clever work. However
it does have some limitations.
It parses the the source code of the program to determine the size and
relative position of the dialog controls. So it does not work with dialogs
created using a resource editor, only with dialogs created by manually (in
the code) laying out the dialog template (UserDialog.) It also flickers
horribly when the user is resizing.
Both of these drawbacks are due to limitations in ooDialog, not Jon's
work. As I said, it is a very clever implementation using what was
available to Jon.
Things related to drawing in a graphical UI are very performance
dependent. The best way to do resizing would be to implement it in the
native C code (or C++ code) of ooDialog. That is something on my list, but
it is a lot of work and has been further down my list. I expect to tackle
it some time towards the end of this year.
The advantage of implementing it in the framework, is that once it is done
and debugged, then adding resizability to dialogs in ooDialog would be
pretty easy.
Leaving programmers no excuse for creating programs that aggravate you.
<grin>
--
Mark Miesfeld
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