Re: Renaissance: bad layout with dynamic title

[Nicola Pero]

>

Hi Michael,

>  I thought I'd take advantage of Renaissance's
> key-value coding support to program the title dynamically:
>
> <gsmarkup>
>     <objects>
>         <vbox id="view">
>             <button id="mainCheckbox" title="#NSOwner.dictionaryName"
> type="switch"/>
>         </vbox>
>     </objects>
>     <connectors>
>         <outlet source="#NSOwner" target="#view" key="view"/>
>         <outlet source="#NSOwner" target="#mainCheckbox"
> key="mainCheckbox"/>
>     </connectors>
> </gsmarkup>
>
> But when I run the program, all of my checkboxes show up as just the
> checkbox, no title.

Yes - the title gets set when the connections are done, which is  
after all objects
have been created, autosized and put in place.  So I'd expect that  
the title does
get changed, but the button's size is still the same as the one it  
had before the
title was set - the new title would then fall outside the frame and  
be clipped,
so you don't see it. ;-)

You can easily confirm it by hardcoding the width of the button:

 <button ... width="200" />

and you should see now the title appearing ;-)


> I've tried many variations on this theme. I've tried setting the  
> title to
> a placeholder, then dynamically updating the title in code (result:
> everything is sized for the original title), I've tried calling
> sizeToFitContent on the vbox and the button (result: no change),  
> removing
> and re-adding the button to its superview (result: no change), I've  
> tried
> using an hbox (no change), an NSBox (naked checkbox in the middle of a
> reasonably wide box), and nothing seems to get the result I want.
> It seems like the layout is getting somehow baked into the view  
> hierarchy
> early on, and I need to prod it into updating but I don't know how  
> to do
> that.

Yes - you would need to redo the layout "bottom-to-top".  I have various
unfinished experiments with designing a good API for that.

But you can already do it programmatically using the stable API for  
autolayout
and the boxes.

Here's how you can do it:

 [* change the button title]

 * call -sizeToFitContent on the button

 * get the new button's size

 * call -setMinimumSize:forView: on the vbox to tell it that the  
button has a new minimum size

 * call -sizeToFitContent on the vbox

I added on Renaissance's subversion trunk the worked out code as an  
example - you find it
in Examples/Special/AutoLayoutUpdate. :-)

Hope that helps

Thanks