request for Revolution Studio

Macintosh Sauce · Post by **Macintosh Sauce** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 9:24 pm

Can RR Ltd please add the following feature to Revolution? I want to see visual alignment guides to line up controls in a window, like in REALbasic. It is a pain to put controls in a window, when you want to comply with Mac OS X human interface GUI standards. This is important IMO!

xApple · Post by **xApple** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 2:31 am

You can of course just add your own guidelines in the matter of 2 lines of script... without mentioning the auto-align fonctionalities you can find in the inspector...

BvG · Post by **BvG** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 12:21 pm

If you want to ignore xApple's dislike for your request, you should add it to the quality center. However you have to keep in mind that the HIG for Windows are different then for Mac OS X, and most such alignment suggestions would either need to be coded for every OS, or be a compromise.

Macintosh Sauce · Post by **Macintosh Sauce** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 6:59 pm

xApple wrote:You can of course just add your own guidelines in the matter of 2 lines of script... without mentioning the auto-align fonctionalities you can find in the inspector...

I see the auto-align stuff, but how would you do it with a script?

Macintosh Sauce · Post by **Macintosh Sauce** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 7:00 pm

BvG wrote:If you want to ignore xApple's dislike for your request, you should add it to the quality center. However you have to keep in mind that the HIG for Windows are different then for Mac OS X, and most such alignment suggestions would either need to be coded for every OS, or be a compromise.

Yeah, I am aware of the differences between Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. There must be some way of doing it in order to make creating the GUI for windows more programmer friendly.

FourthWorld · Post by **FourthWorld** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 6:46 am

Maybe this doesn't have to be OS-specific to be useful. For example, just having indicators which show when edges or center points line up as objects are being moved/resized would be helpful.

Lynn P. · Post by **Lynn P.** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:54 pm

FourthWorld wrote:Maybe this doesn't have to be OS-specific to be useful. For example, just having indicators which show when edges or center points line up as objects are being moved/resized would be helpful.

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Well, it's not the same as those indicators, but there is the Rulers option from the View menu. The blue lines associated with each object will allow you to line up objects on the fly. They can be flakey though. I had to click on the object once, then the ruler... then back on the object I wanted to associate with the ruler before the blue line indicators would link to the correct object I was moving.

Also... I always thought the "Grid" menu option in the View menu would toggle a grid off and on I could use for aligning objects but that doesn't seem to work in OS X in any version of Rev unless I'm missing something.

As far as adhering to the OS X user interface rules, I'm a stickler for that too, but I usually just look it up in the ADC Reference Library or if the interface is simple... I mock it up in Apple's Interface Builder and then recreate it in Rev by just comparing the two on screen and using the ruler. Those indicators would be a nice Plug-in to have though.

Lynn P.

xApple · Post by **xApple** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 3:48 pm

Macintosh Sauce wrote:I see the auto-align stuff, but how would you do it with a script?

It could be something like:

Code: Select all

repeat with x = 1 to the number of btns of this card 
   set the left of btn x to 100 
end repeat

And as I said earlier, if you want to see your own customized guideline, just use the 'line' graphic object.

Macintosh Sauce · Post by **Macintosh Sauce** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 7:03 pm

Lynn P. wrote:I always thought the "Grid" menu option in the View menu would toggle a grid off and on I could use for aligning objects but that doesn't seem to work in OS X in any version of Rev unless I'm missing something.

As far as adhering to the OS X user interface rules, I'm a stickler for that too, but I usually just look it up in the ADC Reference Library or if the interface is simple... I mock it up in Apple's Interface Builder and then recreate it in Rev by just comparing the two on screen and using the ruler. Those indicators would be a nice Plug-in to have though.

That's a problem - the grid option doesn't work in Mac OS X. I tried it and nothing happens.

With the kind of money we are all paying for Revolution Studio, I don't think it is an unreasonable request to have a nice and elegant solution like Xcode or REALbasic. We shouldn't have to make a mock-up in Interface Builder to get the job done. Revolution Studio shines in many areas, but in the actual building of a user interface it is quite poor. That my view anyway...

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 9:20 pm

Hi,

The grid works fine for me on OSX. So... I have it turned off most of the time ;-)

Mark

Lynn P. · Post by **Lynn P.** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 12:05 am

I initially had a misunderstanding of what the grid was. Apparently it just snaps your objects to it rather than showing a visible grid. I wouldn't use something like that, but I would like to have movable guides or have a marker extend from the ruler. That would be a cross platform feature.

Lynn P.