Re: Window staggering
James Spencer wrote: This should be really easy and I don't want to rediscover gravity so I'll ask first: does anyone here have a simple algorithm for staggering new windows in a multiwindow app? I've gotten spoiled by Cocoa, etc. which takes care of this for me but cloning a template window in Rev does not. Obviously, I could just move my new window a bit but I'm not sure how far and in any case, if the number of windows is large enough, we need to restart at the top. I figure someone has written this already?? The magic of a good UI is that it *seems* easy. This one is made easy within Apple's framework, but outside of that framework it's not so easy. It touches on a number of things beyond a simple rect function which a comprehensive framework can serve well, but which is difficult to describe in an email. Just the same we'll give it a try: Apple's recommendations are here: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGWindows/chapter_17_section_4.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/2961-BACFHDHE New document windows should open horizontally centered and should display as much of the document content as possible. The top of the document window should butt up against the menu bar (or the application’s toolbar, if one is open and positioned below the menu bar). Subsequent windows should open to the right 20 pixels and down 20 pixels. Make sure that no part of a new window overlaps with the Dock. Sounds simple enough, and by itself you could use something like this: function NewDocRect pDocNum put item 1 of the screenLoc-300 into L put item 2 of the windowBoundingRect+24 into T put item 1 of the screenLoc+300 into R put item 4 of the windowBoundingRect-4 into B -- put pDocNum*20 into tAdjust add tAdjust to L add tAdjust to T add tAdjust to R -- return L,T,R,B end NewDocRect But that's not enough. :( There are some exceptions not listed in Apple's description but evident in all of their multi-window apps: - If the user moves (but not merely resizes) the topmost document window, the next window be created at the original default position. Note that for Rev development this implies some means of keeping track of which windows are documents (I use a custom property named fwType for that). - If the user creates enough new documents to go too close to the bottom of the display, the next document is created at the expected next horizontal location but positioned at vertically the same as the first default location. - To avoid overlapping the Dock, calculations are best made from the windowBoundingRect rather than the screenRect. There are probably a few other considerations that I'm overlooking right now, but that'll get you started. Given the range of this it touches on, there is no single handler that will cover what you need. I use a combination of a frontscript to trap window moving, properies to differentiate between document and non-document windows, a function to return the rect based on the last rect used, and this is tied into the routines that create new documents so the window sizing happens before the window is drawn. There are subtleties about when you revert to the default loc and when you continue to increment down to the right; check out this behavior in TextEdit. The sizing function is the easy part; it's the infrastructure to support it, and knowing when to reset it, that'll keep ya' busy. ;) You can see my most recent implementation in action in this app made for ResearchWare: http://www.researchware.com/ht/index.html It got a reasonably good review in this month's MacAddict, not too bad for a v1.0: http://www.macaddict.com/issues/2006/4/reviews/transcribe If you spot any behavioral differences between mine and, say, TextEdit's, go with TextEdit's. :) There are still a few imperfections in mine, but it had been lot of work and we had to move on to deal with QT performance issues (thanks to Mark Waddingham for coming through on QT stuff so well in the last couple versions). We're enhancing the window/document management stuff (and menu bar updating routines, and a whole lot more) and moving them into another app for that client, which will be the focus of my Bionic App presentation at RevCon West: http://www.revconwest.com/ Maybe we'll see ya' there? -- Richard Gaskin Managing Editor, revJournal ___ Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Window staggering
Richard and Jim thank you both. It was because I was well aware that there were these exceptions not listed and because it is not a trivial task that I asked my question. A sick part of me is glad to see I have not missed some obviously, and trivially easy solution. Now off to code a fully comprehensive solution (using your suggestions to start) for my own library. Spence James P. Spencer Rochester, MN [EMAIL PROTECTED] Badges?? We don't need no stinkin badges! On Apr 12, 2006, at 2:46 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote: But that's not enough. :( There are some exceptions not listed in Apple's description but evident in all of their multi-window apps: ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Window staggering
James Spencer wrote: Richard and Jim thank you both. It was because I was well aware that there were these exceptions not listed and because it is not a trivial task that I asked my question. If there's a simple way to do proper window staggering it eluded my best effort. :) One thing I found handy from Cocoa is the concept of a default width for documents. You can use that div 2 from center to get the values for the left and right of the window, and in a generalized library that may be helpful as you'll be able to use it on all sorts of different documents. -- Richard Gaskin Managing Editor, revJournal ___ Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Window staggering
This should be really easy and I don't want to rediscover gravity so I'll ask first: does anyone here have a simple algorithm for staggering new windows in a multiwindow app? I've gotten spoiled by Cocoa, etc. which takes care of this for me but cloning a template window in Rev does not. Obviously, I could just move my new window a bit but I'm not sure how far and in any case, if the number of windows is large enough, we need to restart at the top. I figure someone has written this already?? Spence James P. Spencer Rochester, MN [EMAIL PROTECTED] Badges?? We don't need no stinkin badges! ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Window staggering
My first thought is to set a start location (10,10) and an ending topLeft (100,100) and 2 increments (eg. 30,50), then use a loop for the number of windows to find the topLeft, (then set the rightBottom according to the screenrect available, if desired). Of course, step 1 would be determining the window order (alphabetical, current stacking order, etc) on test put 30 into xIncrm put 40 into yIncrm put 10 into xStart put 10 into yStart put 120 into xMax put 160 into widthh put 90 into heightt put xStart into currX put yStart into currY repeat with s = 1 to the number of stacks set the left of stack s to currX set the top of stack s to currY --set the width and height if needed add xIncrm ot currX add yIncrm ot currY if currX xMax then put xStart into currX put yStart into currY end if end repeat end test ---not tested, just typed off the top of my head Jim Ault Las Vegas On 4/11/06 8:12 PM, James Spencer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This should be really easy and I don't want to rediscover gravity so I'll ask first: does anyone here have a simple algorithm for staggering new windows in a multiwindow app? I've gotten spoiled by Cocoa, etc. which takes care of this for me but cloning a template window in Rev does not. Obviously, I could just move my new window a bit but I'm not sure how far and in any case, if the number of windows is large enough, we need to restart at the top. I figure someone has written this already?? Spence James P. Spencer Rochester, MN [EMAIL PROTECTED] Badges?? We don't need no stinkin badges! ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
