From: dnavas@oracle.uucp (David Navas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Icon default tool paths (was Re: A4000 Specs? Who knows.)
Date: 11 Sep 92 15:50:23 GMT
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Redwood Shores CA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
              at Oracle Corporation.  The opinions expressed are those
              of the user and not necessarily those of Oracle.


In article <3707@faatcrl.UUCP> jprad@faatcrl.UUCP (Jack Radigan) writes:
>dnavas@oracle.uucp (David Navas) writes:
>  Not only do you have to adjust the offset from the title due to different
>height fonts in the title, you also have to take into account the offsets
>between each object.  Computing the offsets isn't that hard, that's not
>the problem here, it's determining how many vertical elements you can put
>in a given window since you could render some number of objects below the
>window if the font used is too large.

Now, that -is- a problem.  What to do if the objects would overflow the
window's maximum possible height.

If I do end up fixing that (and not simply failing to open the window/
gadgets), there are several possiblities.

In this system, windows are objects too, so it's not far-fetched to make a
"sub-window" that belongs to the main window and put the overflow gadgets
there.  You'd want some sort of toolbox-type of layout that would
automatically start a new column/row, of course....  That last one I can see
difficulties with -- ick!
You could always change the window's font and send the window a RE-LAYOUT
method ;).

>  And, you can't simply aim for a window that's smaller than the screen
>because you have to consider 200 line non-interlaced NTSC screens.

The way I specify window size >preference< is as a percentage of screen
size.  I assume font preferences often follow that sort of formula too :)
Not sure what else you're implying there, though.

>  The horizontal layout problem has more to do with the language used to
>label the objects, proportional fonts also add some problems of their own

This is simple -- one makes the appropriate TextLength() [or whatever, I
forget] call, and away you go.  Of course, you may have to specify a
text gadget as being so many -average-width- characters wide, but that's
different....

>if you're writing text in various locations, which is why Greg summed it up 
>by saying that you're only going to win if you restrict yourself to a 
>butt-ugly vertical strip of objects.

One would like to have a multi-line text gadget with its own layout code.
I ain't gonna write that, though.  Sorry.

>  And that's the crux of this biscuit, you can't adequately manage it due to
>not having a limitation on height or width of the supplied fonts.

Well, I don't think the user should expect that a terminal would successfully
open, say, a 24line 48point Helvetica font on his x200line screen.  Seems
that a failure to open the window wouldn't cause too much heartburn....

>  If we were told that system would only allow fonts that fit into a narrow
>band of width and height you'd still have some measure of user flexibility
>in choosing the font of their choice while giving us a target that moves
>along predictable vectors to shoot at.

I don't want to be stuck with a 9 point font on a 2000square pixel screen.

A real geometry manager will solve many of these problems.  Not all of them,
not all of them the most elegantly, but it will cease to be a major
annoyance for those of us in Prod-Interl mode to squint at those BUTT-UGLY
8point topaz fonts!!!  And it'll make internationalization a lot easier to
accomplish.

>  -jack-

It will also, unfortunately, take a lot of coding time.  Like I said -- offer
me 38K per year and I'll have it done real fast.  Limit me to two or three
hours each evening, and I won't even guess at a time scale.  :(


David C. Navas						dnavas@oracle.com
Working for, but not speaking on behalf of, Oracle Corp.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.emulations