how to set width for uiEntry

[franko]

Hi all,

I am starting using libui and so far I am very pleased about it.

I have noticed that when you create a new uiEntry it is always quite big, on Windows it can accomodate something like 24 characters. I am therefore wondering how can I create a uiEntry but with a smaller width.

I think for Gtk you can use gtk_entry_set_width_chars () and with the FOX library you can set the number of columns when creating a FXTextField object or even change the width afterward with the method FXTextField::setNumColumns(). Unfortunately libui does not seems to expose any function to choose the uiEntry's width.

I was going to implement the function myself but I was not able to figure out how to set the width of the edit control on windows!

​I was also wondering in general how libui handle the minimum needed size for each control during the layout. More specifically I am wondering where in libui's code the uiEntry is created with such a specific width.

Thank in advance for any help.

[andlabs]

On Windows it's the minimum size code on each control. On GTK+ it's dictated by GTK+ itself. On macOS it's dictated by Auto Layout, and if the control doesn't have an intrinsicContentSize, libui creates one of its own based on Interface Builder's defaults.

As for width by number of characters, you'll need to manually convert to pixels for Windows and macOS. The dialog unit stuff might be able to help for the former, as 4 DLU in the X position is roughly equivalent to the average width of a character.

[franko]

Hi Pietro, thank you for looking at that.

On Windows it's the minimum size code on each control.

Not clear for me what it means. Is it some libui code that compute the minimum size of each control? If yes may be you can tell me the name of the function that is doing the computations.

As for width by number of characters, you'll need to manually convert to pixels for Windows and macOS. The dialog unit stuff might be able to help for the former, as 4 DLU in the X position is roughly equivalent to the average width of a character.

Ok, let forget for a moment the size in term of number of characters. How you are supposed to indicate how much big an entry should be ? For me it is natural, when you design an interface to give some indications or hints about the size of each entries based on its function. In some case you can use the default or let the entry stretch to occupy all the space but in many cases you need to provide some size hints. Normally the hints should be use to determine the minimum size of the control.

​If I find out how it works the layout on windows I may be able to implement something myself but I would like to know if you could accept such changes and if you agree about the need of such a method.