Ok, so that’s the story, I just read the header in the CPP files crediting Asylum Software as the creator.
Nice detective work…I was half expecting to read “and my 3rd bug is that it keeps deleting the last few characters”…but that would just be too funny. If you guys don’t use VMS, how do you design the placement of items on your GUIs?
Just like we used to design HTML pages back in 1995 – by hand, of course
Infact, it is one of my favorite parts of scripting. I use automatic placement and offsets, almost never absolute positions.
same here.
Stuh505 have a look at a couple of my maxscript challenges for a good example if you like:
www.joshuanewman.net/scripts/download/laserwars.zip
www.joshuanewman.net/scripts/download/tangra-lightning_generator.zip
I’t no where near as hard as you may think, but you have to keep executing and adjusting. I kick myself sometimes about moving things around by one pixel < ; sometimes you just have to let things go!
J¬
On the opposite side, I always use absolute positions simply because automatic placement doesnt position the controls exactly where I want.
Sometimes I also push hard to move a control one pixel, by using this app as well:
http://www.downlinx.com/proghtml/84/8429.htm
Check out Pola X to see a prime example.
Light
Josh, the lightning script is awesome! (ever think of making it animated? )
Still, I think you guys are just being stubborn about VMS…if you just use it to draw your GUI elements on, export to ms, and paste that into your code…you don’t have to worry about tweaking it at all, and it takes all of about 5 seconds.
I have made GUI’s without a designer before, usually what I would do is draw the GUI in photoshop, then measure the coordinates of each button or element and write them all down…but this isn’t nearly as good or as easy to tweak as VMS.
If you need to tweak it, just tweak the vms file and re-export to ms. For this reason it is worth it to name the UI elements in the vms editor so that you don’t have to worry about re-naming each time you want to tweak.
Well, you dont have to like it, but it works great for me and saves me tons of time!
I use automatic placement alot too, in fact in many cases I prefer it to VMS, but sometimes it just doesn’t give the results you’d expect, especially when using across with different sized objects, resulting in overlapping and such.
ie.
(
rollout ro "Rollout"
(
button btn01 "Button01" width:16 height:16 across:4
button btn02 "Button02" width:32 height:16
button btn03 "Button03" width:48 height:16
button btn04 "Button04" width:64 height:16
)
createDialog ro
)
It’s an extreme example, but it show’s what I mean.
I’d also like an across function for groups.
[QUOTE=stuh505]Josh, the lightning script is awesome! (ever think of making it animated? ) /
Thanks!!
and yes, I planned to from the start but you know how things go! I haven’t had time for any scripting recently but I like it enough to come back to it so it’s only a matter of time!
Maybe I’m a little more slap-dash when it comes to designing the interface. I studied design so I’ve got an idea about it but I also think having a large resource of scripts behind me helps as I can cut and paste a bit, and most of my scripts are a similar width (260) so you kind of know what will fit across anyway.
I found VMS added loads of stuff I didn’t want, adjusted the formatting in a way that I couldn’t read easily and also broke code.
Maybe I will try it again later.J¬
I’m the same as Bobo, maybe because I creadit Bobo with teaching me Max script. I just use the automatic methods and offsets and avoid ever using the absolute ways. I find that if I ever want to add in another UI item it just sorts it self out but if I use absolute I have to rearange it all. Even if I were to use VMS it would be more work. I also find that is makes a mess of the UI creation as many people have found including if you add another control in the middle of the UI layout it still just adds the code to the bottom so you have to move that around as well. I find it more of a pain then just coding it. And again I’m with Bobo, I like making the UI’s
Light,
your interface is packed tight with so many goodies you would have to use absolute co-ordinates! can’t see your app unfortunately, ‘policy denied’ (damn firewall) Might have a look at home later.
Cheers,
Josh.
That’s right. The interface looks like this:
Light