I'm trying to calculate the actual size needed for uicontrols in a GUI so the GUI can resize itself appropriately. My problem is that the Extent property of a uicontrol is only the text area, and I can't find a way to determine the size of the surrounding control (such as the down arrow in a popup or the margin of an edit control). Is there a way to get the size of the decorations on a control?
I saw this related question on MATLAB Answers, which looked like it ended with no solution as well.
Edit:
For example, I want to calculate how big this popup should be to avoid cutting off the contents:
uicontrol('style', 'popup', 'string', {'a long string'})
Extent only tells me how big "a long string" is, and I still don't know how big to make the popup. I want a way to determine how much extra space is needed on the user's display (without assuming which OS or font sizes they use).
You can use get(hObject,'extent') to find out how much space the string contained in the uicontrol takes up. You can see if this is larger than the uicontrol's position.
The uicontrol Position property gives you the height and width of the bounding rectangle for the control. This has always worked for me. Is there a control where this property does not provide enough information?
If the GUI you're building can be assembled exclusively from Java components, you can use MATLAB's Java integration to create and drive a window using Java Swing components (all from M-code). That sidesteps the problem entirely, since the Java layout managers can do UI layout properly.
Related
A frequent operation in my Windows Table control, which I am reworking and moving into a DLL, is to get the height of a row. This is the maximum of
the height of text in the current font, in pixels
the current small icon height, in pixels (GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYSMICON))
the height of checkboxes, in pixels (determined on a WM_THEMECHANGED, when checkbox information is recalculated)
Calculating the text height, as far as I know, requires getting a DC, selecting the font in (and getting the SYSTEM_FONT if that's NULL), getting the text metrics, selecting the font out, and releasing the DC, all of which can error out/fail/etc. This means that virtually every function in my control can fail.
I can avoid this by storing the text height somewhere else, only calculating it when it changes. I know that text height is a property related to the DPI of the DC that GetDC(hwnd) returns. I would like my control to be DPI-agnostic because DPI awareness is per-process, not per-DLL/per-window.
At the same time, knowing when GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYSMICON) changes would also be useful.
So my questions are simple:
Is there a message that I can look for that will tell me that my DPI has changed and that I need to recalculate my text height?
Is there a message that will tell me that SM_CYSMICON has changed and that I need to recalculate everything? Is it the same one? (I know there is no reliable way to detect a GetSystemMetrics() failure (since 0 is a valid return and it does not set the last error code), so I am assuming it cannot fail with a valid parameter and am simply calling it each time I need to calculate the row height; this is just so I can queue a redraw when the value does change.) Would it also work for SM_CXSMICON?
In addition, looking back at my code, GetThemePartSize() takes a DC as well; do theme items like checkbox images scale with DPI? And if so, what messages do I look for in that case? The same one?
Alternative: is there a non-failing way to get the text height that I don't know about, given only a HWND and HFONT?
I will be happy to take a solution that was introduced in either Windows XP or Windows Vista; if there's a solution that was introduced in a newer version of Windows, then knowing about it could also be beneficial.
Thanks.
There seems no way to change font size or style in code, right?? It seems the only way is to duplicate the font files and load them all when program starts??
Thanks
SpriteFonts convert a font, with style, size, and other parameters, to a pixel-based format for use as a texture within XNA. Those pixels are static, so yes, there is no way to change them, short of looping through per pixel.
However there is scaling (though it won't look so great scaling larger) to help with size adjustments needed, plus you could, like you said, create multiple SpriteFont files from the same base font for different styles, and dynamically choose one of those sprite font "textures" within your code.
Beyond that, for true fully dynamic runtime usage, you'd need to essentially create these sprite font textures on the fly, in memory. This means you'd have to do what the SpriteFont Content Pipeline project does but at runtime instead. This is possible in WinForms, but as far as I know not really an option for WP7 as you apparently are using.
Still a n00b (sorry) and I wondered if there is a solution this rather simple quandry which I cannot find an answer for (probably because it is so simple).
Basically I have a label which is inside a custom box. When I change the box size and then hit run the box size changes back to another random annoying size. It sounds simple enough but can I change it so that it sticks to the definitions I set. I have a series of labels and it would be great if the layout were the same. Thanks.
Turn off 'Live Autoresizing' in the menu.
How can I have a vb6 program which opens correctly in 1280*1024 but when switched to other resolutions say 640*480 i can only see half of the screen. how to re-size my vb6 program so that it automatically fits in any screen resolution?
You need to use the Screen object, this will always give you the current resolution in pixels:
Dim screenwidth,screenheight As Single
screenwidth = Screen.Width \ Screen.TwipsPerPixelX
screenheight = Screen.Height \ Screen.TwipsPerPixelY
Usually a Form amenable to resizing has controls that lend themselves to a "flow" layout. Often this is something like a TextBox, grid control, etc. that supports scrollbars. You shrink/grow such controls as required after allocating positions for (i.e. moving) the fixed-size elements like buttons and such.
For a busy Form with lots of fixed size controls that isn't "document oriented" there is no set answer. Sometimes creating a scrollable Form makes sense but usually it doesn't.
Some people try to resize "fixed" elements, change fonts sizes, etc. This can produce results of mixed quality though, sometimes good and sometimes not.
Considerations about the Form size are best made up front as part of the design process. For some applications it might be better to decide on a minimum supported Form size. In other cases you may have to break things up with dialog Forms or tab controls.
There's no easy way to do this in VB6, like there is in .Net. You have to manually resize everything in the form's Resized event handler based on the new form's client size. It's a pain, and a huge mess, but it's the only way to do it.
Correction: There's never only one way to do things, but I've been programming VB6 for several years, and usually just writing it into the Resize handler is straightforward enough, and I haven't found any good way to do it other than that.
Have you tried any 3rd party tools for doing this? Here's (a free) one that seems to work :-
ActiveResize Control Lite - I created a quick project to try it and it does what it says on the tin!
The lite version has some limitions such as number of forms in project, number of controls on form etc. You can also buy a Standard or Professional version if you need more functionality.
I know we've spent countless hours trying to implement our own resizing code only to remove it all and fix the location of most controls, move a few to make it look better and limit the min/max functionality of the form - none of which give a nice user experience. If we needed to do it again I probably use this control (or a similar one) just for the time savings.
I use ComponentOne SizerOne
The C1Elastic control allow from resizing and maintain the aspect ratio, resizing the inside controls on the setting you defined.
It's not free, but it payed itself with all the time I saved.
Form1.Height = Screen.Height
Form1.Width = Screen.Width
This code sets form size according to screen resolution.
"ActiveResize Control Lite" ActiveX tool is limited to 20 controls per form.
Once we know the screen resolution, there are a number of things you can do.
• The easiest solution would be do design different form to accommodate the four most popular monitor resolutions – 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, and 1600 x 1200.
• Alternatively, we could write code that dynamically resizes and relocates every control on the form, based on the screen resolution – not an easy undertaking!
• Third party controls that resize the controls based on the screen resolution are quite effective. On the whole, though, it's better to just avoid this kind of problem, if you can. For example, see Creating Flexible Forms in Visual Basic (Flexi-Forms) at codeguru.com
To auto fit screen resolution you need to download an active x, drag it on your conform.
Search for "veg gold vb6.0 screen Resize".
At which level in Firefox the active zone around active areas (text and image hyperlinks) is defined ? I would like to experiment ways to extend them to ease the use of touchscreens for the web...
After discussions with some Mozilla folks, I tried to implement a solution using javascript with a Greasemonkey script available at http://www.splitted-desktop.com/~flepied/touchscreen/touchscreen.user.js. It tries to find the nearest link when you click on something that is not active.
The only way I know of is via the CSS property padding.
This is mostly not browser-specific, but determined by the layout information (in html or css). Basically, the area that the "link" element occupies is the clickable area. If you need a larger area, you have to make the element larger .. increase the text that is clickable, increase the font-size, increase padding (which might look strange).