Re: Some somewhat cooler thoughts...

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On Friday, January 24, 2003, at 03:02  pm, BALATON Zoltan wrote:
> I don't know IB well enough but according to the documentation at
> http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/802-2110/ 
> 6i63kq4sk?a=view#03.Working_with_Interface_Builder-98
> it supports a different (but not necessairly insufficient) way of
> specifying autoresize/autolayout constraints than GS[HV]boxes used in
> Renaissance. Probably it is one of the main obstacles to using Gorm to
> edit Renaissance files. I wonder what are the defficiencies of the
> existing mechanism supported by IB/Gorm for autolayout (implemented by
> aligning unarchived objects using the specified constraints after
> unarchiving) and if there was any advantages adopting this mechanism in
> Renaissance. Or the other way around: what about adopting boxes in  
> Gorm.
>
> Boxes are simpler for a programmer creating the UI programmatically,  
> but
> the spring/rope analogy of IB might be more intuitive for visual UI
> designers and more easily/cleanly representable in a graphical editor.

I think the autoresizing in IB/Gorm is very nice and simple... but it's  
not as powerful
as the boxes.

I assume (though haven't checked) that Renaissance already supports the  
standard
autoresizing masks.

IMO anything inside something other than an autoresizing box ought to be
resized using the standard mechanisms, anything inside a box should be
resized according to the rules of the box... that would be pretty  
straightforward really.