Re: [boost] GUI coordinate units (Was: GUI foundations)

From: Joel de Guzman (joel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-10-04 12:25:21

Stefan Seefeld wrote:
> Martin Bonner wrote:
> 
> 
>>I moved from 1024x768 to 1280x1024 because I got given a 17" LCD monitor.
>>Windows-XP doesn't make a bad fist of scaling everything back again to a
>>reasonable size, but a lot of GUIs get a bit messed up because people have
>>done everything in pixels rather than scalable graphics.
> 
> 
> Exactly. To be clear: moving from a 15" to a 17" monitor would, in my
> ideal world, have *no* impact on the physical size of the displayed
> graphics, but rather, would add ~ 1.4" in both dimensions to the useful
> screen area. How many pixels your display has then only affects the quality
> of the rendering, exactly as what you were looking for.
> 
> Of course, this requires a completely vector-graphics-based GUI, which
> is still the exception.

Agree 101% !!!

And that is one area I'd love to work on! This will require a new
way of thinking and quite a bit of work but I think it's the right
way to go. --Expecially since we have cool vector libs like
Antigrain: http://www.antigrain.com/. That is why I think forcing
the use of only platform specific widgets is very limiting. Take
a peek at http://tinyurl.com/c6zhp, for example, where all the
GUI elements, including menus and buttons (even scroll bars) are
implemented on the basis of Anti-Grain Geometry, so that, all the
rendering infrastructure is multi-platform. That's my definition
of beautiful!

And to follow up on the resolution/scaling issue, this:
http://tinyurl.com/8dl6u "demonstrates the capability to display
scalable toolbars. In the chemical sketcher the toolbar buttons
are represented in a simple vector format and being rendered on
the fly. Using pure vector graphics to represent all the GUI
elements, including toolbar buttons allows you to get rid of
the dependency on the screen resolution."

Try that with bland, pre-canned OS factory provided widgets...

Cheers,
-- 
Joel de Guzman
http://www.boost-consulting.com
http://spirit.sf.net