| IDL's (changing) widget behaviour [message #7279] |
Thu, 24 October 1996 00:00 |
steinhh
Messages: 260
Registered: June 1994
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Senior Member |
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(Here I go ranting again....)
After we've finally got IDL 4.0.1 installed here, I'm beginning to take
the time required to digest the *latest* round of widget changes
(3.6 -> 4) to see what has to be done to restore the "damage", so to speak.
One thing that's *always* bothered me about IDL's widgets is that
they seem to be designed for someone with (at least) 2k x 2k pixels
on their screen. Its just amazing how much "air" comes in between and
around every little speck of information on the screen, not to mention
the stupid idea of having a large, *proportional* font as default. Wah!.
Wasting user's screen space is not something I do lightly.
Now, to my great disappointment, I discover that RSI's even taken away
my favourite weapon against wasting screen space, namely setting XPAD=0,
YPAD=0 and SPACE=0 for all the bases necessary to organize my widgets. Why,
oh, why has this possibility been turned off? When I *say* zero, I mean
*zero*, for heavens sake. Some wize guy at RSI apparently decided that this
is meaningless, so it's interpreted as if the keyword is not set, giving
xpad/ypad/space=3 pixels... So I have to use a value of 1. Yes -- I know,
1 pixel isn't a lot, but when you need to organize a widget with a
complex geometry, it's a *complete* waste of pixels to have "air"
inside, around and inbetween every single base!
Please, RSI, give me this back. Even though it means cluttering my code
with *even more* version-dependent code (right now I'm testing for version
4.0(.1) to see if I have to use e.g., xpad=1).
To counter this complete waste of space, I've found that it's possible
to at least take away the (also completely useless) space that's added
to the height of labels/pushbuttons, by using e.g.,
widget_control,widget,scr_ysize=15
But, there's always a but... When I set the dynamic-resize attribute
for this kind of widget, it does get resized, in *exactly* the way
I like it, the scr_ysize is kept, and the width is adjusted to fit
the contents. Now, my great fear is that this will "accidentally" be
discontinued in some future version of IDL. The reason for this is
that the documentation is foggy, to say the least. I hope that the
spec's could be spelled out as "*Those attributes* that have been
explicitly set will never be changed by /DYNAMIC_RESIZE recalculations,
but *all attributes* that have *not* been explicitly set, will be
changed by dynamic resizing".
So, RSI, if you can avoid taking away this,....please? I know that
there could be problems with different low-level routines that might
be changed in the future...but it should be possible to anticipate
and work around problems: As long as the user is given the possibility
of setting the size manually then there's no reason why IDL cannot
interfere to enforce a given policy that makes sense.
And, if anyone out there has some great ideas on how to save space
in widgets, please speak out...
Stein Vidar
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