Concerning Icons, Toolbars, and TabViews...

Forum,

I have a few simple questions concerning the quality of icons in the
IDE, toolbar class features, and tabviews.

1. The icons in my System Folder--actually, throughout the IDE--all
have jagged edges and are not blended.  Even if I change the view
scheme of the System Folder, the icons remain fairly unattractive.  Is
this an artifact of the Community Version, or do I need to adjust some
setting?

2. Until I can bring up Codejock's CommandBars, is there a way to make
Dolphin's toolbars movable and/or floatable, as in MS Office?

3. I'm having trouble with TabView: In every other development
environment I've used, a few tabs appear when dragging the control onto
a form (view).  One can specify the tabs on the fly at design time, and
they appear right then and there.  I can't seem to figure out how to do
this Dolphin.  Is it possible?

Thank you.

Eric

[hidden email] wrote:

> 1. The icons in my System Folder--actually, throughout the IDE--all
> have jagged edges and are not blended.

Seems odd.  What OS are you running on ?  What are your Windows display
settings ?


> 2. Until I can bring up Codejock's CommandBars, is there a way to make
> Dolphin's toolbars movable and/or floatable, as in MS Office?

Nope.  Dolphin's toolbars are wrappers for the Win32 Toolbar control which
doesn't provide that feature.  I suppose one could create a new kind of
container view based on Win32 Rebar controls, but if anyone's done that (and
written the extra code needed to make them float/dock and generally play nicely
with the Dolphin LayoutManager mechanism) then I haven't heard of it.


> 3. I'm having trouble with TabView: In every other development
> environment I've used, a few tabs appear when dragging the control onto
> a form (view).  One can specify the tabs on the fly at design time, and
> they appear right then and there.  I can't seem to figure out how to do
> this Dolphin.  Is it possible?

If you mean that you want to create a view with tabbed panes, then (in the View
Composer) drag a "Card Container.Default view" into your view.  Each new
sub-view you add to that container will be another card.  The label of the card
is controlled by the subview's #layout aspect.

You can also manipulate tabsets directly ("ListPresenter.Tab view") if you need
fine control over the relationship between the list of tabs and other aspects
of your GUI, but it's pretty rare to want to do that, and it involves more
messing around to set up.

    -- chris

Chris,

>Seems odd.  What OS are you running on ?  What are your Windows display
>settings ?

I'm running Windows XP Pro/SP2 with all recent updates, and the
following display settings:

RESOLUTION: 1024x768
COLOR QUALITY: High (24-bit)
REFRESH: 75 Hz
DPI SETTING: Normal (96 DPI)
Full hardware acceleration and no combined writes.

What do you suppose is going on here?

>Nope.  Dolphin's toolbars are wrappers for the Win32 Toolbar control which
>doesn't provide that feature.  I suppose one could create a new kind of
>container view based on Win32 Rebar controls, but if anyone's done that (and
>written the extra code needed to make them float/dock and generally play nicely
>with the Dolphin LayoutManager mechanism) then I haven't heard of it.

I think one could actually leverage the LayoutManager.  It would be
nice to have floating and docking in the IDE.

>If you mean that you want to create a view with tabbed panes, then (in the View
>Composer) drag a "Card Container.Default view" into your view

Ah hah!  O.K., I tried it.  Now I see what you mean.  The tabs showed
right up, although it took me a minute to associate the published
aspect "Arrangement" with the name of a particular tab.  "Text" down
below seems to be the norm for naming this property.

Cheers.

Eric

Eric,

No clue.  Sorry!

Those settings are close enough to the ones on my own machines, and for me D6
resembles
    http://www.object-arts.com/content/pictures/screenshots/SystemFolder.png
exactly (modulo the difference in Windows look between vanilla WinXP and
"classic" look which I run, and the fact that I prefer to use 'largeIcons'
display mode for the system folder's #viewMode instead of the default
'tileIcons').  Does your system folder look the same (same background, etc) bar
the jaggies ?

Maybe something is preventing alpha-blending from working correctly.  If you do
Help=>About Dolphin Smalltalk, does the "Dolphin Smalltalk X6" writing fade in
gradually ?  (I don't know whether that uses the same alpha-blending as is used
internally by Windows for the IDE's icons).  You could try inspecting the
result of
    Icon fromId: 'LiveUpdate.ico'.
If you select the only item in the list of 'Published Aspects' you should see a
blow-up view of a very heavily antialised globe (plus arrow) merging into a
grey background.  Is that how it looks for you ?

If you go to (Windows) desktop properties.  Appearance tab.  Advanced.  Select
"item" Icon.  Is size set to 32 ?  If not then what is it ?


> > Nope.  Dolphin's toolbars are wrappers for the Win32 Toolbar control
> > which doesn't provide that feature.  I suppose one could create a new
> > kind of container view based on Win32 Rebar controls, but if anyone's
> > done that (and written the extra code needed to make them float/dock
> > and generally play nicely with the Dolphin LayoutManager mechanism)
> > then I haven't heard of it.
>
> I think one could actually leverage the LayoutManager.  It would be
> nice to have floating and docking in the IDE.

That's probably true.  I didn't mean it couldn't be done, only that it would
require some code -- probably a specialised kind of LayoutManager.

But my coding fingers are starting to twitch, so I'd better change the
subject...


> > If you mean that you want to create a view with tabbed panes, then (in
> > the View Composer) drag a "Card Container.Default view" into your view
>
> Ah hah!  O.K., I tried it.  Now I see what you mean.  The tabs showed
> right up, although it took me a minute to associate the published
> aspect "Arrangement" with the name of a particular tab.  "Text" down
> below seems to be the norm for naming this property.

In a way it is pretty hacky, but it also has a deep logic to it.  The
#arrangement aspect is a general-purpose "slot" in which the layout information
for each component is kept.  Exactly what kind of information it holds depends
on the #layoutManager of the containing View, not on the view itself.  In some
cases the #arrangement can be quite complicated object (e.g. if the
#layoutManager is a FramingLayout), in others it can be very simple.  In this
case the layout manager is responsible for the tabs, and so only information it
needs is the text to put in the tab, so that's what the #arrangement aspect
holds.  The #text aspect of the view is independent of the layout manager, and
so should not be used to label the tab.  Consider what would happen if the
sub-view were a static text label, with #text
    This page left intentionally blank
(as is the case for some of my incomplete projects ;-), the layout manager
should certainly not use that as the tab's label...

    -- chris

Chris,

To answer your various questions concerning the "icon issue," all
throughout the Dolphin environment, including in various controls
(trees, lists, etc.), the icons have jagged edges and transaparency
issues.  Since the problem exists only in Dolphin, I'm assuming that it
has to do with Dolphin.  Interestingly, I had the same problem with the
Community Edition, so the problem doesn't appear to be edition-specific
(I'm running patch 2; I haven't tried patch 1).

I noticed that there is another current thread concerning icons and
transparency, but I can't tell if it's related.  I would agree with you
though: Something is preventing alpha-blending.  Your suggestion to
examine the LiveUpdate.ico revealed, as you say, a very heavily
antialiased globe merging into a grey background.  I brought up and
examined many other icons--they all look fine.

I just switched to Dolphin and tested an idea that occurred to me while
I was typing this response.  I noticed that the problem of jagged edges
occurs when the icons are painted on a background that displays a
gradient; the problem of transparency (i.e. icons are painted with an
opaque background) appears with solid backgrounds.  It's obviously a
rendering issue, which coincides with that other thread I mentioned.
Could also be a themed background issue...

This problem is beginning to perplex me.

Cheers,

Eric

[hidden email] wrote:

> I noticed that the problem of jagged edges
> occurs when the icons are painted on a background that displays a
> gradient; the problem of transparency (i.e. icons are painted with an
> opaque background) appears with solid backgrounds.

Odd.  Maybe a graphics-driver issue, for all it's hard to see why it should
only affect Dolphin.

I ask again: is your icon size set to something other than 32 ?  Does the
Dolphin splash screen "fade in" correctly ?

I have a slight suspicion that Windows is selecting the wrong image from the
group in each icon, and is picking up a version with <32 bits where Dolphin's
IDE assumes that it will find the one with alpha-blending.

> This problem is beginning to perplex me.

"beginning" ?!?

    -- chris

Chris,

>Odd.  Maybe a graphics-driver issue, for all it's hard to see why it should only affect Dolphin.

If it were, it would most likely manifest as a system-wide problem.

>I ask again: is your icon size set to something other than 32 ?  Does the
>Dolphin splash screen "fade in" correctly ?

Sorry, I missed this question.  Icon size is set to 32, but because I'm
using the Windows XP theme, this setting has no effect.  Since you're
using Windows Classic, however, it definitely would.

>I have a slight suspicion that Windows is selecting the wrong image from the
>group in each icon, and is picking up a version with <32 bits where Dolphin's
>IDE assumes that it will find the one with alpha-blending.

Any idea as to how to test this theory, or should I start a new thread
with more of a technical-support tone?

Eric

Chris Uppal wrote:
I had a similar problem which simply vanished after upgrading the
graphic drivers
(http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin/browse_frm/thread/9cd0be1fef214eac/15a3f62a12282ada?lnk=st&q=%22Udo+Schneider%22&rnum=5#15a3f62a12282ada).

You might as well test the "patches" I discoverd. if these patches solve
the issue I would definitly acuse the display driver.

CU,

Udo

Udo,

I tried your patch, but it had no effect.

It seems to that, if it were a driver issue, I would be experiencing
problems elsewhere.  But in any case, I have the most updated driver.

Thanks though.

Cheers,

Eric

Eric,

> I'm running Windows XP Pro/SP2 with all recent updates, and the
> following display settings:
>
> RESOLUTION: 1024x768
> COLOR QUALITY: High (24-bit)
> REFRESH: 75 Hz
> DPI SETTING: Normal (96 DPI)
> Full hardware acceleration and no combined writes.

I wonder if the problem may be that you are using 24 bit pixels. I
thought this that at this depth the display would only be capable of
RGB (8bits/colour/pixel) so that alpha blend would not be possible. Can
you try adjusting the depth to 32bits (even if it means temporarily
reducing screen resolution) and report back what happens.

Best regards

--
Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com

Andy,

I think my newsreader isn't working again (it's a firewall issue here),
so I'm posting again.  Please forgive if you see double postings, but I
did post two replies: one yesterday and one today.

The problem of jagged icon edges is solved!  I was typing along and
suddenly it struck me that it might be a power-of-two problem.  When
you advised that I try a 32-bit color depth, I thought that, if 2^5
would solve the problem, perhaps 2^4 would also.  Sure enough, it did.
I set my color depth to 16 bits, and the icons now alpha-blend
correctly (although the background image of the System Folder produces
a slight moire pattern, but it's not disconcerting).

What do you suppose could be the issue?  Since the problem doesn't
occur in any other application, only Dolphin, could it be a rendering
issue in Dolphin?  I would be curious to know what happens if you set
_your_ color depth to 24 bits.  It would be a nice diagnostic outcome
if we could reproduce the problem at will.

Thanks very much.

Cheers,

Eric