Hi

Thanks for the example. Exactly, ability to have elements that are visible
but not participate in layout is very important. But first I would like to
describe bloc layout a bit more.

---------------------------------
If you think for a second about the meaning of "layout" you would realize
that layout is just "the way in which the parts of something are arranged
or laid out". So, actually, layout is all about determining the positions
of elements within the parent (origin of bounds). However, real world is a
bit more complicated, especially when it comes to visual elements. In our
world we must also compute size (extent) of every element before actually
laying it out. Bad news is that size depends on layout type and layout
constraints (match parent, fit content, take exact size) that may depend
rather on children or parent.

In Bloc the whole process is divided in two parts: measurement and layout.
They are completely separated and do not overlap.

During measurement step we iterate over the whole tree and depending on
layout and constraints only compute extent of every element. For
optimisation purposes layout caches previous extent and if during new
measurement step it does not change, we stop, skipping children. There is a
rule: if child's constraints didn't change and if child's measurement bit
is not dirty and if parent's extent is the same child will have the same
extent.

Than comes layout step. Because we already measured all extents we can
easily determine positions within the parent, and logic is very simple.
---------------------------------

Now let's think about visibility and visible: setter. What argument should
it be? How do we encode visibility. In Morphic it is a Boolean. However, in
real world it is a bit more complicated.

Sometimes we want an element to be completely gone, it is not visible and
does not take any space within the parent and does not participate in
layout.
Sometimes we want an element to be hidden, it is not visible but it still
occupies space within the parent (it is just empty) and do participate in
layout.
Sometimes we want an element to be floating, it is visible but does not
occupy any space and does not participate in layout. However, a floating
element must be measured (extent computed), we just do not want to compute
its position and simply let user set it manually.

To conclude, instead of Boolean in Bloc visibility is defined
by BlVisibility object.
--------------------------------

Floating mode is exactly what you want, Alex. It can be set easily:

> txt constraints beFloating.


However, I just checked and it does not work. Looks like this feature was
removed during last iteration. I find this feature is a huge step forward,
but now we are many steps back :(


Cheers,
Alex

On 28 August 2016 at 02:24, Alexandre Bergel <alexandre.ber...@me.com>
wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I am working on a popup support in Bloc and I am facing a problem.
> Consider the following code:
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>         space := BlSpace new.
>         space root layout: BlLinearLayout horizontal.
>         10
>                 timesRepeat: [ | e |
>                         e := (BlRectangle new extent: 20 @ 20) asElement.
>                         e background: Color random.
>                         space root addChild: e ].
>         space root children withIndexDo: [ :e :index | e translateBy:
> (index * 30) @ 10 ].
>
>         space root children do: [ :e |
>                 e
>                 addEventHandler:
>                         (BlEventHandler
>                                 on: BlMouseEnterEvent
>                                 do: [ :evt |
>                                                 | txt |
>                                                 txt := BlText new
>                                                         position: evt
> position;
>                                                         fill: Color red;
>                                                         text: 'Hello
> World'.
>
>                                                 e parent addChild: txt ]).
>
>                  ].
>         space show
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
> If you uncomment the second line (“space root layout:…”), then the string
> hello world is added text to the element in which the mouse enter. With the
> layout, the string is added at the end of the line.
>
> I like very much the idea of having the layout applied when elements are
> added (even I suspect we may have scalability issues very soon), but in
> that situation, this is not wished.
>
> Alexandre
> --
> _,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:
> Alexandre Bergel  http://www.bergel.eu
> ^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.
>
>
>
>
>

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