Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

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SparkOut
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by SparkOut » Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:47 pm

The GM has always had issues. I often used it though, and mostly it was ok, but if it went wrong, it generally went majorly screwed up wrong.
I always felt the response was sort of "old timers have come to realise it's not great, and just as easy if not easier to manage your own layout scripting" so there never seemed to be a will to fix it.
I can agree that there other priorities, but it would be nice to have a robust GM. To be fair, it does work, except when it doesn't, which is definitely the minority of occasions.

stam
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by stam » Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:51 pm

And not to mention Brian has already given a fix for this; i've used it and it works as expected, it's just having to remember to run that line of code.

andresdt
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by andresdt » Tue Jul 27, 2021 9:42 pm

I have always created the user interface of the application by code.
But lately I have seen the system that uses flutter and I am wondering why not use it in LiveCode.
I said it and I did it.
Look at the attached image.
It is a project that is under development, but interfaces can already be created at the level of any modern environment.
Now we are trying to implement the CSS3 Grid system. This has given us a lot of headaches, but we are not defeated yet.
It may not be the right place to put this post. But it is important that they know what can be done :D
We hope to finish soon to release the library
Last edited by andresdt on Thu Jul 21, 2022 6:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Klaus
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by Klaus » Tue Jul 27, 2021 10:00 pm

Sorry for getting a bit off-topic, but what happend to your lovely "PolyGrid"?

prometheus
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by prometheus » Tue Jul 27, 2021 10:30 pm

Klaus wrote:
Tue Jul 27, 2021 10:00 pm
Sorry for getting a bit off-topic, but what happend to your lovely "PolyGrid"?
Due to COVID we had to stop working together and currently we have no way to commercialize the PolyGrid and several other projects because of this, but we are working on it.
Last edited by prometheus on Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Klaus
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by Klaus » Tue Jul 27, 2021 11:15 pm

Thank you for the info!

rodneyt
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by rodneyt » Fri Jul 30, 2021 6:47 am

I think I'd better preface here that I'm really not trolling the discussion...

But....

I have no problem with the GM. It's always worked fine for me. I have occasionally in the past added in calls to revCacheGeometry and revUpdateGeometry to manually cause updates.

But I'm certainly not opposed to doing Geo manually, and probably would do that if I was building a substantial commercial app (e.g. possibly in combination with something like Levure frameworks broadcast system so an object can listen for messages to update it's position broadcasterListenForBroadcasts etc).

~ Rodney

stam
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by stam » Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:10 am

rodneyt wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 6:47 am
I have no problem with the GM. It's always worked fine for me. I have occasionally in the past added in calls to revCacheGeometry and revUpdateGeometry to manually cause updates.
Yes agreed, mostly it works OK and if you add calls to revCacheGeometry and reUpdateGeometry, then all is good and actually manual positioning is not required.

However the problem is that without those calls, you can run it extremely weird geometry changes; and most newcomers to LC (as well as experienced users!) won't know to do that. And really why should you have to add those calls or do this manually if you have an otherwise nice tool - that's really what the issue is about.

I think Panos mentioned it should be an easy fix, so why not just get it fixed ;)

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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by richmond62 » Fri Jul 30, 2021 10:28 am

Newcomers

I tell kids I teach that the Geometry manager is "a coming man already gone"
and then show them how to scale using codes in the stackScript or cardScript.

Bernard
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by Bernard » Fri Jul 30, 2021 11:11 am

We have two different views:

1) LC staff have been using GM for years with success.
2) various users who claim it's broken or unreliable

One of 2) came to be 1) after staff at a conference showed him how to use it.

Seems obvious to me that LC Ltd need to have a conferences session video on how they successfully use the GM.

I can tell you now that the 20 years ago I gave up using Java mainly because the Eclipse IDE was so damn awful to use. Didn't matter how many tutorials I followed or how many books I bought, it was an exercise in frustration. And that's just as a code editor, not doing something like geometry management in a highly dynamic GUI tool.

Why don't people email support asking for this videoed session on how to use the GM?

richmond62
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by richmond62 » Fri Jul 30, 2021 11:15 am

videoed session
How about an old-fashioned 5-10 page manual with illustrations?

stam
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by stam » Fri Jul 30, 2021 1:28 pm

Bernard wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 11:11 am
1) LC staff have been using GM for years with success.
2) various users who claim it's broken or unreliable
...
Why don't people email support asking for this videoed session on how to use the GM?
Well you do have a point; this could be lesson or video tutorial.
Unfortunately, the lesson/video tutorial that does exist mentions nothing about revCacheGeometry or revUpdateGeometry. So yes, you could update the lessons/vidoes and explain that in fact it's not broken, you just need to add some extra steps. As it stands, if you follow the lesson exactly you may end up sorely disappointed.

OR you could just change the GM include these changes automatically, so it becomes a non-issue.

As a user with no historical baggage, i know i'd prefer the latter because i'm lazy. And i consider laziness a good attribute ;)

But yes, armed with this knowledge i use the GM regularly and can get it to work. It's just that it's now the last thing i do in a project because i can't be bothered continuously adding code to make the GM work...

rodneyt
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by rodneyt » Sat Jul 31, 2021 2:25 am

As an initial constructive step I have filed an enhancement request to update the Geo properties pane to provide tip for users experiencing issues (point them at trevCacheGeometry or revUpdateGeometry and explain where to use.

This is a 20 minute update, so if there isn't resource to refactor this library it will at least be an incremental improvement for users.

https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=23282

RCozens
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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by RCozens » Mon Aug 09, 2021 5:51 pm

Morning All,

Yesterday I had planned to learn the GM; but after reading the first page of this thread I decided to write a resizeStack handler instead. Two cards with over 1K controls (albeit 1024 of them are grouped to form a 32 x 32 grid). Grouping controls that maintain fixed positions in relation to each other and repositioning them as a group seems easier and more straightforward than applying the GM.

Something else I didn't see mentioned in this thread: if your stack includes a dataGrid, the list of controls the GM displays includes large number of objects in the Data Grid Templates stack.

Cheers!
Rob Cozens dba Serendipity Software Company
Manchester, CA USA

Each new generation gives more attention to the man-made world...
and less attention to the world that made man.

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Re: Why is the geometry manager still borked in 2021?!

Post by FourthWorld » Mon Aug 09, 2021 6:00 pm

Bernard wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 11:11 am
We have two different views:

1) LC staff have been using GM for years with success.
2) various users who claim it's broken or unreliable
And there's also:

3) those who find the GM unnecessary, enjoying working directly with the engine's straightforward, robust, predictable elegance which lies underneath the added layer of the GM script library anyway.
Richard Gaskin
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