I am trying to make a GradientView that is adjustable in Interface Builder. I've been able to get it so I can specify vertical vs horizontal, as well as start/stop colors:
I would like to be able to be able to include intermediate colors as well. Is this possible with the hooks #IBInspectable/#IBDesignable provide?
I could envision a + button which would insert a row there and allow it to accommodate more colors.
(aside: I do wish I would have done this a long time ago, designers seem to throw lots of gradients at me, and I've always open coded them)
Sadly, I don't think you can do that. The IB interface for desigables is quite limited. You can only have single values of a limited number of types. I don't think there is any provision for arrays of things, which is what it sounds like you want.
You might be able to create more than one type of gradient view, each of which takes a different fixed number of colors (e.g. TwoColorGradientView, ThreeColorGradientView, FourColorGraidentView, and FiveColorGradientView). My guess is that a handful of classes would meet the vast majority of your needs.
Related
For a sizeable object (https://vaadin.com/api/framework/7.7.3/com/vaadin/server/Sizeable.html), we obtain the width and height using getWidth() and getHeight() respectively, and the unit via getWidthUnit() and getHeightUnit(). How do I set the width/height unit?
EDIT:
So, the reason I ask is because I have a Panel and I'm working on a function that automatically scrolls it to a certain line. The Scrollable interface only provides setScrollTop in terms of pixels, so I would want to do something like:
panel.setScrollTop(lineNumber/totalLines * heightOfPanelInPixels)
For that, I'm planning on using the SizeReporter addon to give me "heightOfPanelInPixels", but I'm not sure I can guarantee the height being in terms of pixels. If it's not, I would need some way to convert the units.
Also, I asked about setting the unit since I thought it was just a universal thing: like if I could just set the unit for all Sizeables to report in, say, inches or pixels
There isn't really any way of achieving what you want to do, short of setting all sizes as px values from the server. For any other kind of size definition, the actual size in pixels will vary depending on lots of different factors that only the browser keeps track of. Furthermore, there isn't any mechanism that would pass back the actual sizes to the server as they are resolved.
You might want try this add-on that makes the size of selected components available on the server: https://vaadin.com/directory/component/sizereporter.
Old answer below:
There are two ways of setting the size in either direction. They both lead to exactly the same end result - it's just two different ways of expressing the same intent.
Taking the height as an example, there's the setHeight(String) method that expects a CSS definition such as 20px or 3.5em. This method is convenient to use of you want to set a hardcoded size directly from code.
The other approach splits up the size into a numerical size and a separate unit: setHeight(float, Unit), e.g. setHeight(20, Unit.PX). This method is more practical if you want to do calculations with the size, e.g. doubling it by using setHeight(2 * getHeight(), getHeightUnit()).
Setting and getting widths also work in exactly the same way.
I've been trying different tiling WM's to see which one best fits my needs. Every time I try a new one, it looks good but I find other things that don't quite work the way I like. My requirements have evolved as I go. Initially, I didn't want to get into Awesome because having to learn Lua is not on my wish list but maybe I should give it a try IF it can do what I want better than the other tiling WM's out there.
I'm going to as specific as I can about what I want. I am running a 3440x1440 monitor. I want to use as much vertical space as possible (meaning, a full width, persistent but mostly empty status bar is not an option, but I do like the notification area and a date/time).
I understand it may not do everything exactly the way I want, which is oke. If it does more or less most of what I want I can weigh my options between Awesome and other tiling WM's (actually, only i3 which is what I'm using now but I'm open to better suggestions). I would very much appreciate it if people don't just say no to something it can't do, but say "no, but it can do ...". In other words, feel free to suggest alternatives that might be helpful as well.
Divide the screen in 3 columns, initially 30/45/25, with the right column split horizontally; Fully adjustable and resizable as needed during my work session;
Persistent layout; when closing the last application in a tile, I don't want that tile to disappear and the remaining tiles to resize. Just show an empty space and leave all tiles as they are.
tabbed tiles, so I see which applications are running in a tile (similar to i3).
Resizable tiles with the keyboard into 1 direction; When making the middle column/tile wider, I want that into a specific direction into another tile and leave the other side alone.
Certain applications I want to always launch into a specific tile. For instance, terminals always go into the right-most column top/bottom, browser/spotify always into the middle, atom/IDE always into the left. Some applications should always be floating. Obviously I want to be able to send them to a different tile after launch.
I don't want a 100% width status bar. It will be mostly empty which is a waste of screen estate. Preferably, I'd like a statusbar part of a tile, for example in the right-most tile, resizing with it. Otherwise I'd like it to be fixed to 30% and allow tiles which are not beneath it to use the full height of the screen. My reason for a statusbar is mute; I actually only want a notification area and a date time permanently visible. I don't need a "start menu", dmenu or similar is perfect, which I believe it has integrated.
Many thanks in advance!
The general answer is "Awesome configuration is code and it can do whatever you want". But there is a catch. Can Awesome be configured like you describe? Yes, totally. There is at least 2 distributions coming close enough (mine[1] and worron[2]) (at least for the tiling workflow, not the look).
The "catch" is that the workflow you describe isn't really the "Awesome way". Awesome is usually used as an automatic tiler. You have layouts that describe a workflow (code, web, internet) and manage the clients according to their programming. Manual tile management is rarely necessary once you have proper layouts. That doesn't mean you can't, I did, but it might be worth thinking outside the box and see if you can automate your workflow a bit further.
Also, the default layout system isn't very modern and makes it hard to implement the features you requested. My layout system (see link below) can be used as a module or as a branch and supports all features described above. Awesome is extremely configurable and it's components can be replaced by modules.
https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome/pull/644
The layout "serialization" documentation is here:
https://elv13.github.io/libraries/awful.layout.html#awful.layout.suit.dynamic.manual
It is similar to i3 but has more layouts and containers. As for the "leaving blank space" part, it is configured using the fill_strategy:
https://awesomewm.org/doc/api/classes/wibox.layout.ratio.html#wibox.layout.ratio.inner_fill_strategy
As a word of conclusion, I would note that what you ask is "work exactly like i3". If you want such thing, well, use i3. Awesome is a window manager framework. Its goal and purpose is to create a customized desktop shell / WM. If it's what you want, then go ahead and learn it, nothing else can come close to the possibility and the level of control you can get out of it. However it takes time and effort to get to the point where you have "your own perfect desktop". Our users perfect desktops:
https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome/issues/1395
[1] https://gfycat.com/SmallTerribleAdamsstaghornedbeetle
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yNALqST1-Y
The WM your are looking for is herbstluftwm (hlwm). Its a manual tiling window manager. The tiles which you are talking about are called frames in hlwm. Each frame can contain multiple windows. A frame can also be empty. Only if you kill a frame the other frames will automatically resize. You can add new frames vertically and horizontally and resize them. Each frame can also have a different layout to organize the windows inside. The layout you are looking for is max. This will stack the windows inside a frame on each other. It doesn't show you tabs like i3 however. hlwm allows you to create rules to open certain applications always in certain frames and workspaces. hlwm doesn't have a statusbar buildin. I personally like to use tint2. It can be used as a replacement for your requirement to see running applications as tabs.
A little background: I'm working on an iOS app that has a variety of status icons for various states. These icons are used in a variety of places and sizes including as UITableViewCell imageViews, as custom MKMapAnnotations and a few other spots. I actually have a couple sets which include a more static status icon as well as ones that have dynamic text injected into the design.
So at first I went the conventional route of using static raster assets, but because the sizes were dynamic this wasn't always the best solution and I wasn't thrilled with the quality of the scaling using CGAffineTransforms. So instead I changed gears a bit and tried something else:
Created a custom UIView subclass for each high level class of icon. It takes as input the model object that derives the status from (I suppose I could have also just used an enum and loaded this into some kind of model constructor but this is how I did it) so it can decide what it needs to draw, then does the necessary drawing in drawRect. Since all of the drawing is based on the view bounds it scales to any reasonable dimensions.
Created a Category which has class method constructors that take the model inputs as well as the size you want to use and constructs the custom views.
Since I also wanted the option to have rasterized versions of these icons to plug into certain places (such as a UITableViewCell imageView) I also created constructors that build the view and return a UIImage using the fast iOS7 snapshotting functions.
So what does this give me? Well here's the pros/cons that I can see.
Pros
Completely scalable graphics that can easily be used in a variety of different scenarios and contexts.
Easy compatibility with adding dynamic info to the graphics such as text. Because I have the exact shape data on everything I'm drawing I don't need to guesstimate on the bounds for a text box since I know how everything is laid out.
Compatibility with situations where I might want a rasterized asset but I still get all the advantages of the dynamic view since I'm not rasterizing it till I need it.
Reduces the size of the application since I don't need to include raster assets.
Cons
The workflow for creating the draw code in the first place isn't ideal. For simple stuff I can do it straight in code but for more complex things I'll need to create the vector asset in Illustrator or Sketch then bring it into PaintCode and clean up the generated draw code into something more streamlined. This is not the most ideal process.
So the question is: does anyone have any better suggestions for how to deal with this sort of situation? I haven't found an enormous amount of material on techniques for this sort of thing and I'm wondering if I'm missing a better way of handling this or if there are any hidden gotchas here...performance doesn't seem to be an issue from my testing with my approach but I haven't tested it on the iPad3 or iPhone 4 yet so there could still be some unknowns.
You could try SVGKit, which draws SVG files, and can export to a UIImage, if desired.
let's say I want to display a customizable (2D, cartoon-like) character, where some properties e.g. eye color, hair style, clothing etc can be chosen from a predefined set of options. Now I want to animate the character. What's the best way to deal with the customization?
1) For example, I could make a sprite sheet for each combination of properties. That's not very memory efficient and not very flexible, but probably gives the best performance.
2) I could compose the character from various layers, where each property only affects one layer. Thus, I could make a sprite-sheet for the body, a collection of sprite-sheets for the eyes (one for each eye color) etc.
2a) In that case, I could merge the selected sprite-sheets in order to generate a single sprite-sheet containing the animation of the customized character.
2b) Alternatively, I could keep the sprite-sheets separate and try to animate them simultaneously as layers. I fear, that this might become a problem performance-wise.
3) I could try to modify the layers programmatically, e.g. use a sprite-sheet for the eyes as a mask and map some texture on it before merging it down to a single sprite-sheet. I would think this is a very flexible approach when it comes to simple properties like eye colors, but might become difficult for things like hair-style. I am aware that this depends much on the character and probably a general answer is difficult.
I assume that my problem is not new, so there is probably a standard approach to it.
Concerning the platform, I'm particularly interested in iOS and try to avoid OpenGL (well, I'm open-minded). Maybe there is a nice framework that can help me here?
Thanks!
Depending on what your working on, you might want to animate part/all of the animations outside in another tool, such as flash. It is much easier to work with a visual environment.
Then there are tools that take swf files, and create sprite sheets that you would then animate in cocos2d.
That is a common game creation workflow.
You problably want to take a look on how to create sprites at cocos2d.
Cocos2d comes with a set of tools that help you to animate single parts and offers abstractions to compose parts (like CCBatchNode or CCNode). Also, it comes with tools that helps you to pack sprites into sprite sheets (e.g Texture Packer) and develop levels (e.g Level Helper).
Cocos2d is an open source framework and it is widely used. You also have cocos3d but I never used it :).
I use a non-default Windows colour scheme on most of my machines, and have a laptop with a 124 DPI screen, which Windows is set to.
A lot of programs I tested or even use daily seem to have problems with that, showing for example non-standard sizes of controls, cut-off UI elements, unreadable text and so on. There is the whole range from slightly annoying to (nearly) unusable.
Now I feel that a lot of these issues are unnecessary. A simple test run on a high-resolution screen in a few colour schemes would show them, some of them are even very easy to correct (like always using clWindow, clWindowText and clBtnFace instead of clWhite, clBlack and clSilver). Some of them are harder, like proper control sizing.
So my question is: Do you try to follow the recommendations in the UI guidelines regarding system colours, sizing and spacing of UI elements, and font sizes and faces? Is testing for compliance to them part of your QA process? Do you even try to lay out your forms in dialog units instead of pixels, even though most of the IDEs (Delphi in my case) have pixel-oriented designers?
[EDIT]: On re-reading this after sleeping I notice that this question may look like an invitation for fruitless discussion. It is not meant that way, I'd definitely be interested in tools to help me create applications that conform to the UI interface guidelines, an area where I feel Delphi is letting me down a little. See also my own answer.
I definitely don't. It costs time that I prefer spending on improving the experience of many rather than the few who use non-standard windows settings. A few things I usually do, which should still fix some of these issues:
use clWindows etc. because that's the standard for Delphi controls anyway, so why change it?
place labels above entry fields rather than to the left, which should solve many size problems
make sure the forms resize properly, by setting the anchors
make sure the tab order is correct (which can become a major annoyance if not done)
But I certainly don't take the time to set up test computers with odd resolutions and colors, or even worse, change my development box to use them (which will screw lots of things that again take time to reset properly).
If a paying customer reports problems with non-standard settings, it depends on the customer whether they will be addressed. If he orders 100 licenses, his chances are good. If he uses these settings because he is visually impaired, his chances are good. If he makes it part of the requirement, I will do it, but charge for the additional work.
Today, so much software doesn't work properly at a non-standard DPI that I don't think it's worth trying to fix it. The trouble-shooting FAQs for many applications just instruct users to switch to a normal font size for related problems. Microsoft acknowledged lack of proper DPI support in 3rd-party software and redesigned the display scaling methods in Windows Vista, where all GDI operations are scaled on a low level instead of relying on applications being aware of the DPI setting.
Final answer: it depends on your software's audience. If your software is likely to be used by disabled users, it might be worth the effort.
Apart from using the proper colour constants for standard colours I invest some extra effort for applications that we need to use internally on high DPI screens, or where customers may need this.
I have a unit with helper functions for determining proper sizes and placement margins, which compute these from the default GUI font and the standard values in dialog units as given in the UI guidelines, and with helper functions to compute the maximum width / height of an array of controls, place controls, things like that. For fixed size forms and dialogs I calculate the placement of controls once after translating their text with GNU gettext, for resizable forms I do this in an OnResize handler.
This gives good results, is however time-consuming. I would like to have something like the wxWidgets sizer functionality, which automates resizing once the minimum size of a control is set. I have never seen something similar for Delphi, though.
I occasionally test it myself for large fonts, because my Vista laptop is set to Large Fonts. Colors, not so much, but I rarely specify colors on controls.
However, proper resizing is pretty hard. I usually set Forms scale to false, so as that they won't resize wrong.
There are a few tools for auto-resizing forms. I did look into them, but never got around to testing them properly:
TFormResizer
ElasticForm - ironically (given the component's area) most of the text in this page won't show up in Chrome...
JVAutoFormSize (in JVCL - doesn't seem to be very useful from what I read)