Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] window sizing issue

[Michael Dickens]

On Mar 15, 2007, at 5:15 PM, address@hidden wrote:
> I've got an application with 3 plot windows and a control area in  
> the bottom. Depending on the screen resolution, the control area on  
> the bottom is "covered" by the lowest of the 3 plot windows.  The  
> applicatoin works fine at 1600x1200 but less well at 1440x900, and  
> certainly at lower resolutions the control boxes are getting covered.
>
> What can I do so that even at lower resolutions I can see the  
> entire application?  I've tried adjusting the middle numeric field  
> (vbox.add(self.scope.win, 4, wx.EXPAND)) in the vbox.add entry from  
> 4 to 0, which helps for 1440x900 but this doesn't work for all  
> resolutions and I don't know what this value represents anyway.  Is  
> there a recommendation for making my application resolution- 
> independent?  I've attached the python-code.  Any advice is  
> appreciated!

I've been studying GUI design recently, and I can tell you that it's  
not simple learning WX or wxPython as documentation really isn't very  
good (IMHO).  Does folks have particular references (online tutorial,  
book, PDF) that they really like?  I could use some pointers ... I've  
seen those provided by the WX and wxPython projects, and Google'd  
various others, but none really do justice to all the methods and  
variables for even such "simple" things as a BoxSizer.

I think this is correct: The "0" or "4" you're referring to is a  
"weight" of the particular added object.  The "weight" is taking into  
account when the BoxSizer [0] determines how big an object should be;  
"0" weight (I think) means to not consider this object in the sizing  
but rather instead to just allocate its actual size (in pixels).   
Tweaking this value helps only so much, as objects can get only so  
small and screens only so large.  Each object has a property,  
something like "minimum size"; some of these are straight forward to  
set while others seem to be less so if not impossible.

In the case of the "fftsink" GUI, the default frame size is (X,Y) =  
(640, 240), as found in gr-wxgui/src/python/fftsink.py , and you can  
change this in the call to "fftsink.fft_sink_c" with "size=(50,50)"  
or whatever you want.  Ditto for fftsink2.py.  Then you'll want to  
change the "weight" in the "vbox.Add" call to 1 for each of these.

That for "scopesink" is also (640, 240) [gr-wxgui/src/python/ 
scopesink.py], except that this value doesn't actually get used for  
anything (oops, bug alert).  The "scopesink" also has some extra GUI  
stuff below it that doesn't seem to be set to EXPAND; nor is "size"  
passed around to any of the classes that actually create the GUI  
objects.  Thus some work needs to be done on the scopesink classes  
stuff in order to get "size" to work.

Once the scopesink is corrected (as appended [1]), then you'll  
probably want (in your am_rcv_plasma.py) to vbox.Add them with a  
weight of 1, and everything else with a weight of 0.  At least for  
me, this looks OK at down to around (X,Y) = (750,525) ... nothing  
special that small, but it does work.

[0] The BoxSizer 'vbox' to which you refer is a means for placing  
objects into a GUI with minimal user defined parameters; this  
particular one is a "vertical box" only, which means that items are  
added from the top of a window towards the bottom, in rows.  Each row  
can have a different number of columns, each of which is generally a  
BoxSizer in its own right (a "horizontal" one).

[1] I've appended updated files, with corrections for these issues.   
Place them in the same directory before trying to execute your  
"am_.." script since it now depends on the fftsink_mod script being  
in that same directory.  I'll think about what should really be done  
to scopesink to get it working properly, since this is just a quick  
fix for an obvious problem but it's not "ideal" I don't believe.

am_rcv_plasma_mod.py
Description: Text Data

scopesink_mod.py
Description: Text Data