Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sun, 1 Nov 2020 15:31:57 - (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote: > > I have no objection to saving the most recent window size and using > that on the next startup, but I hate applications that force the > _location_ of the window. I've configured my window manager to open > windows where I want them opened, please respect that. Hear, hear! This user has invested a lot of time learning how to live comfortably with his window manager. When some upstart app invalidates that knowledge and the corresponding deeply ingrained habits, it's a big annoyance. -- To email me, substitute nowhere->runbox, invalid->com. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2020-11-01, songbird wrote: > >> to keep a program simple i made it to open in the center. > > That's not simple: it actually takes _extra_ work to do that. this was the first python3 program i wrote, i certainly do not know python3 or desktop application standards or much of the other stuff i did, but the program does work and i'm fine with it as what it is. by no means is any program the final statement on any problem - they are all iterations. some fail, some go further. mayhaps, i'll get further, i can't say at the present, mainly because my time for programming is not that much during the spring/summer/fall. i'm only taking a look at this thread because it does touch on issues i'm curious about and i'm gradually getting more time so perhaps there's a chance it will get some updates and changes this winter. someone commented to me that if that is my attitude then perhaps nobody will play it. that's ok, i didn't write it for anything other a learning experience. that experience will perhaps continue... i may also perhaps get run over by a mad cow tomorrow and the future will then be left for someone else to determine. :) >> if i ever get back to it i'll have to figure out how to ask >> the windowing system what it wants to do for placement > > I've never heard of doing that before. I've written lots of desktop > GUI apps in the past 30 years, and I've never written one line of code > dealing with the location of the top-level window. I just let the > toolkit and window manager handle it. if there are answers to the following questions this would go in my file for future efforts. 1. i'm running Debian testing, lightdm and MATE desktop. 2. i don't know anything about how those things provide information to an application. pointers would be appreciated. 3. the application is written in python3, using gtk3 and pyglet. it is a very rotten first attempt, i admit that. :) but also, for what it is it does work. note, it does not work on Windows because i don't have a windows machine for development and testing nor do i have the inclination to do that right now (which is why that's not done yet). i've posted links to it here before but just so anyone doesn't have to search for it i'll put the link here too: https://github.com/flowerbug/ngfp have fun, cheers, etc. :) songbird -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-11-01, songbird wrote: > certainly it isn't but it is my game and i kept it simple. if > people don't like it then they can find something else to play. i'm > good with that, but the next time i get back to making changes i'll > see what i can figure out for saving the location where someone has > moved it. I have no objection to saving the most recent window size and using that on the next startup, but I hate applications that force the _location_ of the window. I've configured my window manager to open windows where I want them opened, please respect that. -- Grant -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-11-01, songbird wrote: > to keep a program simple i made it to open in the center. That's not simple: it actually takes _extra_ work to do that. > if i ever get back to it i'll have to figure out how to ask > the windowing system what it wants to do for placement I've never heard of doing that before. I've written lots of desktop GUI apps in the past 30 years, and I've never written one line of code dealing with the location of the top-level window. I just let the toolkit and window manager handle it. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Mats Wichmann wrote: > On 10/30/20 6:47 PM, songbird wrote: ... >> do you object to a window being put in the approximate >> center of the screen? > > Absolutely! I'm fighting that on a system which, after an update, > insists on opening new terminal windows centered - some recent policy > change is now doing that instead of where the same thing was placed the > last time it was open (I assume I'll find the knob for that eventually). > As others have said, there's no one-size-fits-all; on a big screen you > certainly don't want the same things as on a phone, where "take over the > whole screen" might indeed be the only thing that makes sense. to keep a program simple i made it to open in the center. if i ever get back to it i'll have to figure out how to ask the windowing system what it wants to do for placement and then store that location as part of the configuration if the person moves it. i don't use multiple screens yet nor do i mind moving an item once when i'm starting up, but i could see where if there are a lot of windows that it would be annoying to have to move all of them. songbird -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2020-10-31, songbird wrote: ... >> do you object to a window being put in the approximate >> center of the screen? > > YES. I've configured my window manager so windows start up where I > want them to start up. It's none of the application's business where > it's window is. > > When developing an application, try to remember IT'S NOT YOUR > COMPUTER. certainly it isn't but it is my game and i kept it simple. if people don't like it then they can find something else to play. i'm good with that, but the next time i get back to making changes i'll see what i can figure out for saving the location where someone has moved it. songbird -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 4:18 PM Peter J. Holzer wrote: > On 2020-10-31 17:12:36 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > > On 2020-10-31 at 19:24:34 +0100, > > "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > > > On 2020-10-31 11:58:41 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com > wrote: > > > > I never claimed it was easy. Yes, the author of an MUA has to make a > > > > guess and a bunch of decisions about a useful default setup (such a > set > > > > of defaults already appears elsewhere in this thread). > > > > > > Aha. And why would be better to "make a guess" than to use information > > > available at runtime? > > > > Some information, sure. Please don't assume that physical pixels or > > physical millimeters of display space relate to useful window sizes. > > It does. It's the upper bound. The window may be smaller, but not > larger. > Actually, I think Qt does this (base some parts of layout on the screen's physical size) at some fundamental level. Or so I suspect - I don't know for sure just yet. But if I run a Qt app in TigerVNC (EG keepassxc or an hello world), the app comes up as just a blank window, or it gives a SIGFPE in konsole while sizing the window. And concomitantly xdpyinfo believes that the physical dimensions of the TigerVNC screen are 0x0mm. If I do the same thing over plain ssh+X11 tunneling between the same two hosts, all 3 of those apps work fine, and the dimensions of the screen aren't 0x0. In TigerVNC's partial defense, I'm told that in newer versions of TigerVNC the screen dimensions are no longer 0x0mm. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
30.10.20 17:56, flaskee via Python-list ΠΏΠΈΡΠ΅: > Perhaps a more tactical approach would best to figure > out how to do cross-platform python apps. > > What is the best approach to determining the user's available screensize, > when they open your python application? > > Note that the "desktop" application could be running on Android, iOS, > MacOS, Windows or Linux (I think that I understand how to handle it for > browser-based things.) > > As close to an all Python answer as possible, would be optimal. It depends on the GUI toolkit you are using. For example in Tkinter you can use methods winfo_screenwidth() and winfo_screenheight() of your widget if you need the size in pixels. winfo_screenmmwidth() and winfo_screenmmheight() return the size in millimeters. For other toolkits look at the corresponding documentation. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 17:12:36 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > On 2020-10-31 at 19:24:34 +0100, > "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > > On 2020-10-31 11:58:41 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > > > I never claimed it was easy. Yes, the author of an MUA has to make a > > > guess and a bunch of decisions about a useful default setup (such a set > > > of defaults already appears elsewhere in this thread). > > > > Aha. And why would be better to "make a guess" than to use information > > available at runtime? > > Some information, sure. Please don't assume that physical pixels or > physical millimeters of display space relate to useful window sizes. It does. It's the upper bound. The window may be smaller, but not larger. > > > But I'm sticking to my story: that setup should be based on > > > *application domain* objects, like messages and mailboxes, and not > > > size(s) of the screen(s) (in pixels or inches). > > > > I'm also sticking to my story that those objects are frequently too > > large too display completely. They will need a container with a > > scroll-bar. And then you need to decide how large that container should > > be. > > Again, I don't think we're disagreeing. Our shiny new MUA comes up and > finds 10 million messages in the user's inbox. Pick a number of > messages, like 10, or 42, and start there. Don't start with the screen > size and do a bunch of font metric arithmetic to come up with a number > of pixels. We do disagree fundamentally here. I think picking an arbitrary number like 10 or 42 out of thin air is fundamentally broken. Computing than number by dividing the screen height (minus chrome) by the height of one element is the right thing to do. (Using the number stored last time when the user resized the window is of course also ok (because that was the user, not the programmer). But the application has to be ready to adjust that if the current screen is smaller) hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. |_|_) || | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 at 19:24:34 +0100, "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > On 2020-10-31 11:58:41 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > > On 2020-10-31 at 14:37:52 +0100, > > "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > > > > > On 2020-10-31 07:51:38 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > > > > > > The intial/default window should be big enough to contain the > > > > initial/default content, regardless of the configuration of the > > > > screen(s)/monitor(s). > > > > > > As I already wrote in an answer to Igor, this is only possible if the > > > initial/default content is of fixed size ... > > > > Bear with me, but I think that that's part of the problem. Suppose my > > application edits documents. The initial content is two buttons, New > > and Open (I depend on the underlying OS and/or window manager for > > quitting). Is the window a fixed size? No, it's big enough to hold two > > buttons, sized and scaled based on user supplied defaults, possibly at a > > lower level, like X11 or Qt. > > In my book that counts as fixed size ... Then we already have a terminology issue. :-) I'll take at least part of the blame because my question as written is ambiguous: what I meant to ask was whether or not the application can specify a predetermined size, in pixels or in millimeters, for that window. I believe that the answer is no, because the "correct" size for that window depends on other things, like the size of the font, the density of the pixels, user preferences, etc., which can change over time. (And my argument remains that said correct size does *not* depend on the size(s) or the aspect ratio(s) of the screen(s).) > ... The layout manager can use the information it has (font family and > size, margins, etc.) compute the sizes of the two buttons, then > compute the size of the container (possibly using that info to resize > the buttons), and use that to compute the size of the window. The > application then requests a window of that size from the window > manager. Yep. > Now consider what happens when the user clicks on that Open button and > loads the document to be edited. You have to add a text editor widget to > your window. How large should that be? You know hwo many lines your > document has, but using a 5000 line text widget for a 5000 line document > would be ridiculous. You could say "the rest of the window", but your > window is just large enough for the buttons, so your text widget would > end up with 0 lines - not very useful. Any fixed size will be too large > or too small (and while users can usually cope with too small, many of > them are completely flummoxed by windows which are too large). The application should pick a size for that widget in lines and columns of *glyphs*, or a size that matches a potential physical rendering (like a page in a book) in millimeters, again regardless of the characteristics of the screen. Yes, an initial guess may be suboptimal. Ambitious users can adjust the window and/or their preferences to taste, and have to recognize that such preferences may depend on other things. When I switched from a 1920x1080 laptop display to a 3840x2160 laptop display that was the same size, I had to change a lot of preferences because applications and font libraries made incorrect assumptions about pixel density. I can almost see an application (or a developer) wanting to make that editing widget, say, 80 characters wide and 2/3 as tall as the screen, because vertical scroll bars are perfectly acceptable. Yeah, that'll look pretty. Until I (the user) get that wall-size display but I still want my editing widgets and the text therein to be the same size as my handwritten notes on real A4 paper. > Phones are easy: All apps are full-screen (or half-screen, if the OS > supports that). The app can't request a window size, it has to work > with what it's got. That's how video terminals used to be, 80x24, until they weren't. That's how Apple Macinntosh's used to be, 512x384x1, until they weren't. You get the idea. :-) In Apple's defense, the docs I used in 1984 laid out a completely heterogeneous display environment, and had instructions for software that would work when a given window spanned multiple physical display devices. I remember how impressed I was when my simple image viewer worded as advertised when we got our first external color displays. > > > Very often this is not the case: An image viewer will be used to display > > > images which are larger than the screen. A MUA may have to display > > > hundreds of mailboxes, and maybe tens of thousands of mails in a single > > > mailbox. > > > > I never claimed it was easy. Yes, the author of an MUA has to make a > > guess and a bunch of decisions about a useful default setup (such a set > > of defaults already appears elsewhere in this thread). > > Aha. And why would be better to "make a guess" than to use information > available at runtime? Some information, sure. Please don't assume that physical p
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2020, at 01:26, Igor Korot wrote: > This one is for "JAVAsucks" - > https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visual.html > This one is for wxWidgets - https://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.0/overview_sizer.html > This one is for Qt - https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/layout.html > This one is for GTK - > https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/LayoutContainers.html > > Are you still going to argue "it does not exist"? Those have nothing to do with the sizing or placement of top-level windows, they are for placements of widgets within the top-level window. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 11:52:31 -0700, Ethan Furman wrote: > On 10/31/20 11:24 AM, Peter J. Holzer wrote: > > On 2020-10-31 11:58:41 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > > > I don't think we're disagreeing too much here, either. IMO, the user > > > should be in control, whether by config file or command line or > > > whatever, > > > > Config files and command lines are inputs to the application. The > > programmer has to decide what options to accept, what they mean and how > > to process them. As far as this discussion is concerned, they are > > strictly part of the application. > > I'm not sure which of the above two snippets I'm (dis)agreeing with, but if > the user has specified in the config file that they want "full screen", how > does the application tell the layout manager that? It doesn't directly. It tells the window manager that it wants to go full screen. The window manager resizes the window, which causes a resize event to be sent to the application. The application then asks the layout manager to recompute the layout based on the new window size (the latter will probably be managed automatically by the framework, so the programmer doesn't have to write code for that, but it's still part of the application). hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. |_|_) || | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 11:54:59 -0500, Igor Korot wrote: > On Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 8:40 AM Peter J. Holzer wrote: > > > On 2020-10-31 07:51:38 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > > > On 2020-10-31 at 13:02:03 +0100, > > > "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > > > > On 2020-10-31 12:30:43 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > > > > > There is no valid way for an application to read my mind and size > > > > > itself. Attempting to query my screen size seems to just make things > > > > > worse in a lot of situations. > > > > > > > You still haven't answered the question: Where should the initial > > > > window size come from? Does your window manager tell the application > > > > how large a window should be? And if it does, can you as a user > > > > configure that? I don't think mine (xfce) does that. (I guess tiling > > > > WMs generally do that, but I've never used one.) > > > > > > The intial/default window should be big enough to contain the > > > initial/default content, regardless of the configuration of the > > > screen(s)/monitor(s). > > > > As I already wrote in an answer to Igor, this is only possible if the > > initial/default content is of fixed size (or at least guaranteed to be > > smaller than the screen size). > > > > Any control at any given moment has a fixed size. > If I can't set the initial size of the control in the appropriate layout > system, then this is not a layout system. Correct. But you and Chris and others were arguing that this size should never be based on the screen size. Instead suggestions included "a guess" and "a reasonable N". > > Very often this is not the case: An image viewer will be used to display > > images which are larger than the screen. A MUA may have to display > > hundreds of mailboxes, and maybe tens of thousands of mails in a single > > mailbox. > > > > In these cases an application can't use the "natural size": It would be > > bigger than the screen, and depending on the window manager, the user > > might not even be able to resize it because the handles are off-screen. > > > > What is natural size? Please define this term. Depends on the thing to be displayed of course. For a JPG or PNG image, the "natural size" would be one image pixel = one display pixel. Except that for small images on high dpi displays it might be a "logical pixel" (is that the correct term?) instead. For a a text, the natural size is a box around the complete text typeset in the way it should be displayed. Similarly for a list or a table. A tree has two sizes that could be considered "natural": Fully collapsed and fully expanded. But it will almost always be somewhere in between, so that's another situation where a programmer would need to determine what is reasonable. > > It could use some size which is small enough to fit on any screen (how > > large is that? Can you assume 1366x768 these days?). But for most users > > this would be annoying, since they would have to resize the window. > > > > (And note that "the user has to do than only once, the second time the > > application can use the saved layout" doesn't hold either: The user may > > have invoked the application on a large desktop monitor the first time, > > but at some point they use the small laptop monitor or a projector.) > > > > This is exactly my point. > If the underlying toolkit is smart enough and the layout system is good > then it won't matter. Well. I haven't seen one which is smart enough. It might be because I don't do desktop development (when I need a UI, I write a web app), but I think the problem is (in general) unsolvable without domain knowledge, and so far nobody has written anything to change my mind. I would need to see either code or at least an explanation how this is done. "It just works" is not a good argument for a techie. > > I am very much a fan of letting layout and window managers do as much as > > possible. But I don't think they can do everything. They simply don't > > have the necessary information. > > > > Of course not. > Thats why software devs are paid big money to do proper designs. π Well, I have to agree with Chris here. Most programmers (especially those who are paid big bucks) don't do proper designs. hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. |_|_) || | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 10/31/20 11:24 AM, Peter J. Holzer wrote: On 2020-10-31 11:58:41 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: I don't think we're disagreeing too much here, either. IMO, the user should be in control, whether by config file or command line or whatever, Config files and command lines are inputs to the application. The programmer has to decide what options to accept, what they mean and how to process them. As far as this discussion is concerned, they are strictly part of the application. I'm not sure which of the above two snippets I'm (dis)agreeing with, but if the user has specified in the config file that they want "full screen", how does the application tell the layout manager that? (And yes, I have three screens, and each one has a full-size window running in it. Also, four virtual desktops, one for each area of interest. I hate overlapping windows.) -- ~Ethan~ -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 11:58:41 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > On 2020-10-31 at 14:37:52 +0100, > "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > > > On 2020-10-31 07:51:38 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > > > > The intial/default window should be big enough to contain the > > > initial/default content, regardless of the configuration of the > > > screen(s)/monitor(s). > > > > As I already wrote in an answer to Igor, this is only possible if the > > initial/default content is of fixed size ... > > Bear with me, but I think that that's part of the problem. Suppose my > application edits documents. The initial content is two buttons, New > and Open (I depend on the underlying OS and/or window manager for > quitting). Is the window a fixed size? No, it's big enough to hold two > buttons, sized and scaled based on user supplied defaults, possibly at a > lower level, like X11 or Qt. In my book that counts as fixed size. The layout manager can use the information it has (font family and size, margins, etc.) compute the sizes of the two buttons, then compute the size of the container (possibly using that info to resize the buttons), and use that to compute the size of the window. The application then requests a window of that size from the window manager. Now consider what happens when the user clicks on that Open button and loads the document to be edited. You have to add a text editor widget to your window. How large should that be? You know hwo many lines your document has, but using a 5000 line text widget for a 5000 line document would be ridiculous. You could say "the rest of the window", but your window is just large enough for the buttons, so your text widget would end up with 0 lines - not very useful. Any fixed size will be too large or too small (and while users can usually cope with too small, many of them are completely flummoxed by windows which are too large). > Placement of the window is up to the > window manager, which is also ultimately configured by the user. No argument there. I'm talking about determining the size of widgets. > > ... (or at least guaranteed to be smaller than the screen size). > > Then how will I *ever* display that 8x10 glossy (with my apologies for > the idiom; 8x10 inches is a "standard" size for a physical desk photo) > of yours truly on my phone? Phones are easy: All apps are full-screen (or half-screen, if the OS supports that). The app can't request a window size, it has to work with what it's got. (Same for web applications: They can't resize the browser, so they have fit the layout into available space.) Desktop Applications OTOH can request a window size (and I think they even have to, at least with X11, and I think also with Windows). So the application must somehow determine how large a window it should request. > > Very often this is not the case: An image viewer will be used to display > > images which are larger than the screen. A MUA may have to display > > hundreds of mailboxes, and maybe tens of thousands of mails in a single > > mailbox. > > I never claimed it was easy. Yes, the author of an MUA has to make a > guess and a bunch of decisions about a useful default setup (such a set > of defaults already appears elsewhere in this thread). Aha. And why would be better to "make a guess" than to use information available at runtime? > But I'm sticking to my story: that setup should be based on > *application domain* objects, like messages and mailboxes, and not > size(s) of the screen(s) (in pixels or inches). I'm also sticking to my story that those objects are frequently too large too display completely. They will need a container with a scroll-bar. And then you need to decide how large that container should be. > Also, yes, image viewers are different from MUAs. The latter has to be > much more aware of certain aspects of the display devices(s), but should > still base window sizes on *content* rather than choosing to be "full > screens (plural), because I'm the most important application ever." I never argued that applications should be full screen. Full screen is easy (see above). The hard part is figuring out a size which is acceptable for most users. (Also, yes, image viewers are different from MUAs, but for the topic at hand they share an important property: There is no single "correct" size for the thing(s) they display) > > In these cases an application can't use the "natural size": It would be > > bigger than the screen, and depending on the window manager, the user > > might not even be able to resize it because the handles are off-screen. > > I remember window managers that let applications open windows that I > can't move. Aside from a few tricks to "hide" windows, that's a bug. > > > It could use some size which is small enough to fit on any screen (how > > large is that? Can you assume 1366x768 these days?). But for most users > > this would be annoying, since they would have to resize the windo
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sun, Nov 1, 2020 at 4:10 AM Igor Korot wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 8:40 AM Peter J. Holzer wrote:
>
> > On 2020-10-31 07:51:38 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote:
> > > On 2020-10-31 at 13:02:03 +0100,
> > > "Peter J. Holzer" wrote:
> > > > On 2020-10-31 12:30:43 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote:
> > > > > There is no valid way for an application to read my mind and size
> > > > > itself. Attempting to query my screen size seems to just make things
> > > > > worse in a lot of situations.
> > >
> > > > You still haven't answered the question: Where should the initial
> > > > window size come from? Does your window manager tell the application
> > > > how large a window should be? And if it does, can you as a user
> > > > configure that? I don't think mine (xfce) does that. (I guess tiling
> > > > WMs generally do that, but I've never used one.)
> > >
> > > The intial/default window should be big enough to contain the
> > > initial/default content, regardless of the configuration of the
> > > screen(s)/monitor(s).
> >
> > As I already wrote in an answer to Igor, this is only possible if the
> > initial/default content is of fixed size (or at least guaranteed to be
> > smaller than the screen size).
> >
>
> Any control at any given moment has a fixed size.
Yes - as determined by the layout manager, NOT the application.
> If I can't set the initial size of the control in the appropriate layout
> system, then this is not a layout system.
Sure, but the initial size should not be defined in pixels - it should
be defined by whatever makes logical sense ("a list box with room to
show these items").
> After the initial size is set it is up to the application to properly give
> the aspect ratio, font sizes, etc when the application is moved between the
> windows, resized, or DPI has changed, etc.
Why? Are you running on a potato where these kinds of basics aren't
handled by the window manager? Get a better window manager.
> > It could use some size which is small enough to fit on any screen (how
> > large is that? Can you assume 1366x768 these days?). But for most users
> > this would be annoying, since they would have to resize the window.
> >
> > (And note that "the user has to do than only once, the second time the
> > application can use the saved layout" doesn't hold either: The user may
> > have invoked the application on a large desktop monitor the first time,
> > but at some point they use the small laptop monitor or a projector.)
> >
>
> This is exactly my point.
> If the underlying toolkit is smart enough and the layout system is good
> then it won't matter.
>
>
> > I am very much a fan of letting layout and window managers do as much as
> > possible. But I don't think they can do everything. They simply don't
> > have the necessary information.
> >
>
> Of course not.
> Thats why software devs are paid big money to do proper designs.
>
And that's why the companies that pay big money to get software devs
to do "proper designs" inevitably end up with pixel-precise rigid
layouts that are utterly unusable on any system the devs didn't test
on.
Meanwhile, people like me - and several others who've posted in this
thread - take the lower-effort option that gives better results. We
define our layouts by rules, and allow the system to define the flow.
Pages like this might be a bit ugly, but I've spent maybe half an hour
working on the layout:
https://sikorsky.rosuav.com/hypetrain?for=devicat
The mobile version took me FAR more effort. I might have put... an
entire hour into this. Maybe even 90 minutes.
https://sikorsky.rosuav.com/hypetrain?for=devicat&mobile=1
Try those on different sizes of screens. Try them on different font
sizes, DPI settings, or anything else you care about. They might not
be the fanciest, they might not be the most showy, but they're not
much more ugly on any other system than they are on my own.
I do the same with desktop layouts too, although it's harder to
showcase that. My Dungeons & Dragons character sheet manager is
entirely rule-based in its GUI, with everything defined as "put a box
here labelled Attributes, and inside it, label/input pairs for STR,
DEX, INT, WIS, CON, CHA". It is *far* easier to maintain than
something where you have to manually lay everything out in pixel
positions.
Why do people get paid big money to make suboptimal designs? Because
the people paying them want something that looks good, not something
that can actually be used by everyone. Because actual usability
testing is incredibly rare. Because it's really hard to put a graph of
how annoyed your customers get with your web site onto a PowerPoint
slide.
ChrisA
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Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 15:22, Grant Edwards wrote:
> > A MUA may have to display hundreds of mailboxes, and maybe tens of
> > thousands of mails in a single mailbox.
>
> No. It doesn't. It has to display a tree widget that shows N items
> and holds tens of thousands of items, or a scrolling list widget
> than shows M items and holds tens of thousands of items. Pick
> reasonable initial default values for N,M and then let the window
> manager and user do the right thing.
But that's exactly the issue. On my phone, a "reasonable default N"
might be 7 items and consume the whole screen; whereas on my netbook,
a "reasonable default N" might be 15 in one layout or 25 in another;
and on my daily driver, a "reasonable default N" might well be 50 or
100 depending on layout or monitor orientation.
How does the application determine "reasonable"? It probes the
system for screen dimensions (hopefully with multi-monitor smarts)
and then makes an attempt to paint the display.
This doesn't free it from being subject to a window manager's
subsequent constraints, but at least allows the application to make
some sensible choices for initial defaults. Some window-managers are
dumb (glares at Windows), some are accommodating (I like how Fluxbox
behaves), some are dictatorial (e.g. tiling window managers that give
far less wiggle-room for applications' dimensions), and some largely
ignore the user ("maximize" on MacOS annoys me to no end, maximizing
only enough to display all the content; when what I want is to obscure
everything else for single-app focus; requiring me to manually resize
the window with the mouse so it fills the screen).
-tkc
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Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 12:01 PM <2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com> wrote: > On 2020-10-31 at 14:37:52 +0100, > "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > > > On 2020-10-31 07:51:38 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > > > > The intial/default window should be big enough to contain the > > > initial/default content, regardless of the configuration of the > > > screen(s)/monitor(s). > > > > As I already wrote in an answer to Igor, this is only possible if the > > initial/default content is of fixed size ... > > Bear with me, but I think that that's part of the problem. Suppose my > application edits documents. The initial content is two buttons, New > and Open (I depend on the underlying OS and/or window manager for > quitting). Is the window a fixed size? No, it's big enough to hold two > buttons, sized and scaled based on user supplied defaults, possibly at a > lower level, like X11 or Qt. Placement of the window is up to the > window manager, which is also ultimately configured by the user. > It is also based on the theme used and the screen DPI > > ... (or at least guaranteed to be smaller than the screen size). > > Then how will I *ever* display that 8x10 glossy (with my apologies for > the idiom; 8x10 inches is a "standard" size for a physical desk photo) > of yours truly on my phone? > π > > Very often this is not the case: An image viewer will be used to display > > images which are larger than the screen. A MUA may have to display > > hundreds of mailboxes, and maybe tens of thousands of mails in a single > > mailbox. > > I never claimed it was easy. Yes, the author of an MUA has to make a > guess and a bunch of decisions about a useful default setup (such a set > of defaults already appears elsewhere in this thread). But I'm sticking > to my story: that setup should be based on *application domain* > objects, like messages and mailboxes, and not size(s) of the screen(s) > (in pixels or inches). > > Also, yes, image viewers are different from MUAs. The latter has to be > much more aware of certain aspects of the display devices(s), but should > still base window sizes on *content* rather than choosing to be "full > screens (plural), because I'm the most important application ever." > Agreed. However, the application may start full screen on the first run and let the user position and size it saving it for restarting. Or the app can let the WM position it and again let the user place it saving the position/size for restart. > > In these cases an application can't use the "natural size": It would be > > bigger than the screen, and depending on the window manager, the user > > might not even be able to resize it because the handles are off-screen. > > I remember window managers that let applications open windows that I > can't move. Aside from a few tricks to "hide" windows, that's a bug. > > > It could use some size which is small enough to fit on any screen (how > > large is that? Can you assume 1366x768 these days?). But for most users > > this would be annoying, since they would have to resize the window. > > It should request the size it wants, and be prepared to handle not > getting it. Usually, that means scroll bars. > > > (And note that "the user has to do than only once, the second time the > > application can use the saved layout" doesn't hold either: The user may > > have invoked the application on a large desktop monitor the first time, > > but at some point they use the small laptop monitor or a projector.) > > Aha! On this we agree! :-) > > > I am very much a fan of letting layout and window managers do as much > > as possible. But I don't think they can do everything. They simply > > don't have the necessary information. > > I don't think we're disagreeing too much here, either. IMO, the user > should be in control, whether by config file or command line or > whatever, and not the application inflicting its own ideas on me about > how to use my screen real estate. > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 11:40 AM Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2020-10-31, Peter J. Holzer wrote: > > > Very often this is not the case: An image viewer will be used to > > display images which are larger than the screen. > > Tell the image widget what image you want to display, and then forget > about it. Let the toolkit and window manager do their jobs. > You also should pick an appropriate control for displaying it. I don't think you can use static window - you should be using something with the scrollbar, which will size accordingly and display scrollers on demand. > > A MUA may have to display hundreds of mailboxes, and maybe tens of > > thousands of mails in a single mailbox. > > No. It doesn't. It has to display a tree widget that shows N items and > holds tens of thousands of items, or a scrolling list widget than > shows M items and holds tens of thousands of items. Pick reasonable > initial default values for N,M and then let the window manager and > user do the right thing. > Exactly. > > I am very much a fan of letting layout and window managers do as > > much as possible. But I don't think they can do everything. They > > simply don't have the necessary information. > > They do in a well-written application. > As I said earlier - that's why devs get their money. > -- > Gran > > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 8:40 AM Peter J. Holzer wrote: > On 2020-10-31 07:51:38 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > > On 2020-10-31 at 13:02:03 +0100, > > "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > > > On 2020-10-31 12:30:43 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > > > > There is no valid way for an application to read my mind and size > > > > itself. Attempting to query my screen size seems to just make things > > > > worse in a lot of situations. > > > > > You still haven't answered the question: Where should the initial > > > window size come from? Does your window manager tell the application > > > how large a window should be? And if it does, can you as a user > > > configure that? I don't think mine (xfce) does that. (I guess tiling > > > WMs generally do that, but I've never used one.) > > > > The intial/default window should be big enough to contain the > > initial/default content, regardless of the configuration of the > > screen(s)/monitor(s). > > As I already wrote in an answer to Igor, this is only possible if the > initial/default content is of fixed size (or at least guaranteed to be > smaller than the screen size). > Any control at any given moment has a fixed size. If I can't set the initial size of the control in the appropriate layout system, then this is not a layout system. After the initial size is set it is up to the application to properly give the aspect ratio, font sizes, etc when the application is moved between the windows, resized, or DPI has changed, etc. > Very often this is not the case: An image viewer will be used to display > images which are larger than the screen. A MUA may have to display > hundreds of mailboxes, and maybe tens of thousands of mails in a single > mailbox. > > In these cases an application can't use the "natural size": It would be > bigger than the screen, and depending on the window manager, the user > might not even be able to resize it because the handles are off-screen. > What is natural size? Please define this term. > It could use some size which is small enough to fit on any screen (how > large is that? Can you assume 1366x768 these days?). But for most users > this would be annoying, since they would have to resize the window. > > (And note that "the user has to do than only once, the second time the > application can use the saved layout" doesn't hold either: The user may > have invoked the application on a large desktop monitor the first time, > but at some point they use the small laptop monitor or a projector.) > This is exactly my point. If the underlying toolkit is smart enough and the layout system is good then it won't matter. > I am very much a fan of letting layout and window managers do as much as > possible. But I don't think they can do everything. They simply don't > have the necessary information. > Of course not. Thats why software devs are paid big money to do proper designs. π Thank you. > hp > > -- >_ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. > |_|_) || > | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing > __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 01:20:39 -, Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2020-10-30, Peter J. Holzer wrote: > > > So, assuming the user is invoking the application for the first time, > > how should an application determine how much of the screen it should > > use? > > You arrange the widgets the way you want them using the user's > settings for the toolkit and let the sizers figure out the size. Ok. I am trying one last time. Consider a very minimalistic image viewer. It has a menu bar at the top and shows one image. The path to the image may be passed as sys.argv[1], in which case it should be immediately displayed. The image should be displayed in "natural" size but must be scaled down if it doesn't fit. How do you do that? You may use any framework, preferrably (since this is a Python group) a cross-platform framework usable from Python. hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. |_|_) || | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 11:33 AM Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2020-10-31, songbird wrote: > > Chris Angelico wrote: > > ... > >> I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know > >> best and decide that they own the entire screen. It is incredibly > >> annoying. > > > > do you object to a window being put in the approximate > > center of the screen? > > YES. I've configured my window manager so windows start up where I > want them to start up. It's none of the application's business where > it's window is. > > When developing an application, try to remember IT'S NOT YOUR > COMPUTER. > And its not you that will use an application. So whatever works for you may not work for user. Thank you. > > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 8:00 AM Chris Angelico wrote: > On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 11:53 PM <2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com> > wrote: > > > > On 2020-10-31 at 13:02:03 +0100, > > "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > > > > > On 2020-10-31 12:30:43 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > > > > > > There is no valid way for an application to read my mind and size > > > > itself. Attempting to query my screen size seems to just make things > > > > worse in a lot of situations. > > > > > You still haven't answered the question: Where should the initial > > > window size come from? Does your window manager tell the application > > > how large a window should be? And if it does, can you as a user > > > configure that? I don't think mine (xfce) does that. (I guess tiling > > > WMs generally do that, but I've never used one.) > > > > The intial/default window should be big enough to contain the > > initial/default content, regardless of the configuration of the > > screen(s)/monitor(s). "The GUI," whether it's something near the > > bottom, like X11, or something more complicated, like GTK or Qt, should > > have the information and/or the API to make the widgets usable and the > > text readable, possibly based on user configuration (e.g., I like 6 > > point type on my 288dpi laptop display; other people might like 12 point > > type on their 72dpi big screen monitor). > > This. The window manager gets information from the internal layout > manager, but the application itself shouldn't care. I should be able > to build a window by saying "it should have a notebook, and that > notebook should have a label saying Name and an input big enough for > 20 characters, and below that a label saying Class and a drop-down > with options Wizard, Cleric, Fighter, etc, etc, etc, etc". At no point > should pixel sizes or screen sizes be within the scope of my > application. > Amen to that, Chris. Thank you. > ChrisA > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 at 14:37:52 +0100, "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > On 2020-10-31 07:51:38 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > > The intial/default window should be big enough to contain the > > initial/default content, regardless of the configuration of the > > screen(s)/monitor(s). > > As I already wrote in an answer to Igor, this is only possible if the > initial/default content is of fixed size ... Bear with me, but I think that that's part of the problem. Suppose my application edits documents. The initial content is two buttons, New and Open (I depend on the underlying OS and/or window manager for quitting). Is the window a fixed size? No, it's big enough to hold two buttons, sized and scaled based on user supplied defaults, possibly at a lower level, like X11 or Qt. Placement of the window is up to the window manager, which is also ultimately configured by the user. > ... (or at least guaranteed to be smaller than the screen size). Then how will I *ever* display that 8x10 glossy (with my apologies for the idiom; 8x10 inches is a "standard" size for a physical desk photo) of yours truly on my phone? > Very often this is not the case: An image viewer will be used to display > images which are larger than the screen. A MUA may have to display > hundreds of mailboxes, and maybe tens of thousands of mails in a single > mailbox. I never claimed it was easy. Yes, the author of an MUA has to make a guess and a bunch of decisions about a useful default setup (such a set of defaults already appears elsewhere in this thread). But I'm sticking to my story: that setup should be based on *application domain* objects, like messages and mailboxes, and not size(s) of the screen(s) (in pixels or inches). Also, yes, image viewers are different from MUAs. The latter has to be much more aware of certain aspects of the display devices(s), but should still base window sizes on *content* rather than choosing to be "full screens (plural), because I'm the most important application ever." > In these cases an application can't use the "natural size": It would be > bigger than the screen, and depending on the window manager, the user > might not even be able to resize it because the handles are off-screen. I remember window managers that let applications open windows that I can't move. Aside from a few tricks to "hide" windows, that's a bug. > It could use some size which is small enough to fit on any screen (how > large is that? Can you assume 1366x768 these days?). But for most users > this would be annoying, since they would have to resize the window. It should request the size it wants, and be prepared to handle not getting it. Usually, that means scroll bars. > (And note that "the user has to do than only once, the second time the > application can use the saved layout" doesn't hold either: The user may > have invoked the application on a large desktop monitor the first time, > but at some point they use the small laptop monitor or a projector.) Aha! On this we agree! :-) > I am very much a fan of letting layout and window managers do as much > as possible. But I don't think they can do everything. They simply > don't have the necessary information. I don't think we're disagreeing too much here, either. IMO, the user should be in control, whether by config file or command line or whatever, and not the application inflicting its own ideas on me about how to use my screen real estate. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31, Peter J. Holzer wrote: > You still haven't answered the question: Where should the initial window > size come from? The GUI toolkit used by the application calculates a "desired" window size based on the widgets and layout constraints. That desire is passed to the window manager, and the window manager then decides what the winow size is. > Does your window manager tell the application how large a window > should be? Yes. > And if it does, can you as a user configure that? Yes. > I don't think mine (xfce) does that. (I guess tiling WMs generally > do that, but I've never used one.) -- Grant -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 10/30/20 6:24 PM, Grant Edwards wrote: On 2020-10-30, flaskee via Python-list wrote: but allow the user to alter things, via preferences. If you want to remember when a user resizes the application and re-open with that same geometry, that's OK. Doin't it "via preferences" is right out. Why is using preferences "right out"? Is that not the user saying where they want the app to be positioned? -- ~Ethan~ -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31, Random832 wrote: > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020, at 20:18, Igor Korot wrote: >> Hi, >> >> On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 6:59 PM Peter J. Holzer wrote: >> > So, assuming the user is invoking the application for the first time, >> > how should an application determine how much of the screen it should >> > use? It has to make some choice, and any hard-coded value is almost >> > certainly wrong. So why should an application not use the screen size as >> > one factor? >> >> It is not up to application. >> It is up to the underlying layout system to decide. > > What is a "layout system"? In a GUI toolkit, it's a set of constructs that lets you specify the relative positions of widgets, which widgets are flexible and which aren't, and so on. The layout system then determines the sizes of widgets and windows. > I don't think such a thing exists, in > general, for positioning top-level windows on major platforms. On Linux/Unix, there certainly is. It's called a window manager. There are many to chose from, and they have various user-configurable settings that allow the user to control the sizes and positions of top-level windows. > Each application has to write its own, Nonsense. > and it is reasonable for the layout system itself [which, as I've > pointed out, is part of the application - there is no such thing as > a system service] to need access to this information. There are two levels of layout system services: the GUI toolkit/framework and the window manager. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sun, Nov 1, 2020 at 3:35 AM Grant Edwards wrote:
>
> On 2020-10-31, Chris Angelico wrote:
> >
> >> do you object to a window being put in the approximate
> >> center of the screen?
> >>
> >
> > If that's where my window manager chooses to put it, great! The
> > application just says "I want a window of this size"
>
> But let the widget/toolkit layout engine figure out the size. The
> application developer should just specify what widgets are needed and
> how they are to be arranged. The developer should _not_ be specifying
> window sizes.
Correct. There's effectively a negotiation up and down the chain where
the application itself doesn't care one iota what a "pixel" is, and
its window's size is defined by content. A lot of sizes will be
defined in terms of text ("I want an entry field big enough for 40
characters", which is an approximation of course, but a useful one),
and others might be defined by other things, but the precise pixel
dimensions are up to the layout engine - which should be using native
widgets, which effectively puts the control back in the hands of the
window manager.
And putting control in the hands of the window manager means putting
it in the hands of the user. The user can configure his/her computer
completely. It is not the application's computer, it is the user's.
ChrisA
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Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 10/30/2020 12:05 PM, Grant Edwards wrote: On 2020-10-30, flaskee via Python-list wrote: What is the best approach to determining the user's available screensize, when they open your python application? IDLE, based on tkinter based on tcl/tk has a feature to vertically zoom an editor window to the full usable height, which is vertical pixel - top and or bottom taskbar pixels. The only way we found to do that is to go full screen, get the window size, and revert to previous size. Not foolproof (or rather, not expert-proof), but a best-known effor. All you need to know is how big your application window is. The user's available screen size is none of your business. See above. -- Terry Jan Reedy -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31, Peter J. Holzer wrote: > Very often this is not the case: An image viewer will be used to > display images which are larger than the screen. Tell the image widget what image you want to display, and then forget about it. Let the toolkit and window manager do their jobs. > A MUA may have to display hundreds of mailboxes, and maybe tens of > thousands of mails in a single mailbox. No. It doesn't. It has to display a tree widget that shows N items and holds tens of thousands of items, or a scrolling list widget than shows M items and holds tens of thousands of items. Pick reasonable initial default values for N,M and then let the window manager and user do the right thing. > I am very much a fan of letting layout and window managers do as > much as possible. But I don't think they can do everything. They > simply don't have the necessary information. They do in a well-written application. -- Gran -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-30, flaskee via Python-list wrote: > Funny thing about people who bitch and complain > and offer no help, Layout your widgets using appropriate sizers and constraints, and then let them and the window manager do their jobs. You shouldn't be messing about with window sizes and locations, or you end up with abominations like Visual Basic programmers used to produce in the bad old days. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31, Chris Angelico wrote: > >> do you object to a window being put in the approximate >> center of the screen? >> > > If that's where my window manager chooses to put it, great! The > application just says "I want a window of this size" But let the widget/toolkit layout engine figure out the size. The application developer should just specify what widgets are needed and how they are to be arranged. The developer should _not_ be specifying window sizes. > and the window manager decides where that should go. The application > doesn't. Exactly. Don't try to override the window manager if I've configured it to open your application in at certain location and/or a certain window size. It's my computer. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-30, flaskee via Python-list wrote: > In odd screen sizes or multi-monitor situations, > I make the best guess, Stop guessing. Let the window manager, and layout algorithm do the jobs for which they were designed. > but allow the user to alter things, via preferences. If you want to remember when a user resizes the application and re-open with that same geometry, that's OK. Doin't it "via preferences" is right out. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-30, Peter J. Holzer wrote: > So, assuming the user is invoking the application for the first time, > how should an application determine how much of the screen it should > use? You arrange the widgets the way you want them using the user's settings for the toolkit and let the sizers figure out the size. > It has to make some choice, and any hard-coded value is almost > certainly wrong. Definitely, absolutely wrong. > So why should an application not use the screen size as > one factor? Because it's got nothing to do with the appropriate window size for the application? Why should the application start out any larger just because the screen is larger? -- Grant -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31, songbird wrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: > ... >> I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know >> best and decide that they own the entire screen. It is incredibly >> annoying. > > do you object to a window being put in the approximate > center of the screen? YES. I've configured my window manager so windows start up where I want them to start up. It's none of the application's business where it's window is. When developing an application, try to remember IT'S NOT YOUR COMPUTER. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 10/30/20 6:47 PM, songbird wrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: > ... >> I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know >> best and decide that they own the entire screen. It is incredibly >> annoying. > > do you object to a window being put in the approximate > center of the screen? Absolutely! I'm fighting that on a system which, after an update, insists on opening new terminal windows centered - some recent policy change is now doing that instead of where the same thing was placed the last time it was open (I assume I'll find the knob for that eventually). As others have said, there's no one-size-fits-all; on a big screen you certainly don't want the same things as on a phone, where "take over the whole screen" might indeed be the only thing that makes sense. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 07:51:38 -0500, 2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com wrote: > On 2020-10-31 at 13:02:03 +0100, > "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > > On 2020-10-31 12:30:43 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > > > There is no valid way for an application to read my mind and size > > > itself. Attempting to query my screen size seems to just make things > > > worse in a lot of situations. > > > You still haven't answered the question: Where should the initial > > window size come from? Does your window manager tell the application > > how large a window should be? And if it does, can you as a user > > configure that? I don't think mine (xfce) does that. (I guess tiling > > WMs generally do that, but I've never used one.) > > The intial/default window should be big enough to contain the > initial/default content, regardless of the configuration of the > screen(s)/monitor(s). As I already wrote in an answer to Igor, this is only possible if the initial/default content is of fixed size (or at least guaranteed to be smaller than the screen size). Very often this is not the case: An image viewer will be used to display images which are larger than the screen. A MUA may have to display hundreds of mailboxes, and maybe tens of thousands of mails in a single mailbox. In these cases an application can't use the "natural size": It would be bigger than the screen, and depending on the window manager, the user might not even be able to resize it because the handles are off-screen. It could use some size which is small enough to fit on any screen (how large is that? Can you assume 1366x768 these days?). But for most users this would be annoying, since they would have to resize the window. (And note that "the user has to do than only once, the second time the application can use the saved layout" doesn't hold either: The user may have invoked the application on a large desktop monitor the first time, but at some point they use the small laptop monitor or a projector.) I am very much a fan of letting layout and window managers do as much as possible. But I don't think they can do everything. They simply don't have the necessary information. hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. |_|_) || | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 11:53 PM <2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com> wrote: > > On 2020-10-31 at 13:02:03 +0100, > "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > > > On 2020-10-31 12:30:43 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > > > > There is no valid way for an application to read my mind and size > > > itself. Attempting to query my screen size seems to just make things > > > worse in a lot of situations. > > > You still haven't answered the question: Where should the initial > > window size come from? Does your window manager tell the application > > how large a window should be? And if it does, can you as a user > > configure that? I don't think mine (xfce) does that. (I guess tiling > > WMs generally do that, but I've never used one.) > > The intial/default window should be big enough to contain the > initial/default content, regardless of the configuration of the > screen(s)/monitor(s). "The GUI," whether it's something near the > bottom, like X11, or something more complicated, like GTK or Qt, should > have the information and/or the API to make the widgets usable and the > text readable, possibly based on user configuration (e.g., I like 6 > point type on my 288dpi laptop display; other people might like 12 point > type on their 72dpi big screen monitor). This. The window manager gets information from the internal layout manager, but the application itself shouldn't care. I should be able to build a window by saying "it should have a notebook, and that notebook should have a label saying Name and an input big enough for 20 characters, and below that a label saying Class and a drop-down with options Wizard, Cleric, Fighter, etc, etc, etc, etc". At no point should pixel sizes or screen sizes be within the scope of my application. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 at 13:02:03 +0100, "Peter J. Holzer" wrote: > On 2020-10-31 12:30:43 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > > There is no valid way for an application to read my mind and size > > itself. Attempting to query my screen size seems to just make things > > worse in a lot of situations. > You still haven't answered the question: Where should the initial > window size come from? Does your window manager tell the application > how large a window should be? And if it does, can you as a user > configure that? I don't think mine (xfce) does that. (I guess tiling > WMs generally do that, but I've never used one.) The intial/default window should be big enough to contain the initial/default content, regardless of the configuration of the screen(s)/monitor(s). "The GUI," whether it's something near the bottom, like X11, or something more complicated, like GTK or Qt, should have the information and/or the API to make the widgets usable and the text readable, possibly based on user configuration (e.g., I like 6 point type on my 288dpi laptop display; other people might like 12 point type on their 72dpi big screen monitor). -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-30 20:47:50 -0400, songbird wrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: > > I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know > > best and decide that they own the entire screen. It is incredibly > > annoying. > > do you object to a window being put in the approximate > center of the screen? Yes, I do. That puts all the windows on top of each other and I have to move them to a better position. I have configured my window manager to place new windows so that the overlap with existing windows is minimised. hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. |_|_) || | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 12:30:43 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 10:57 AM Peter J. Holzer wrote: > > On 2020-10-31 10:02:12 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > > > On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 9:55 AM flaskee via Python-list > > > wrote: > > > > I have done all of this resizing and layout stuff before. > > > > > > > > I just ignored the grouchy user with the hate over me wanting > > > > screensize. > > > > (every list has one of those types, eh? :-) > > > > > > > > Screensize, in part, determines the aspect ratio calcs to dynamically > > > > resize and place the components on the screen. > > > > > > > > > > So what would you do if it turns out that my screen is 5440 x 2104? > > > That's what mine is right now. > > > > That depends on the application. > > > > If for example the application is in image viewer and the image to be > > viewed is 4576x3432 pixels large, that wouldn't fit on the screen. > > Assuming 200 pixels of vertical chrome (title bar, window borders, menu > > bar and/or buttons), the image would have to be resized to (at most) > > 2539x1904 pixels. So the window would be sized to accommodate that. > > > > (If you use a multi-screen setup, the calculation should be based on > > the current screen, of course, not on the combined size of all screens) > > > > But what is the "current screen"? That's the problem. The one where the window manager decided to put the window? (Ok, there may be a bit of a catch-22 here: You might want that information before actually creating the window, but the window manager can only place the window once it's created. Plus the placement might depend on the size.) > MANY applications (mostly games) decide to put themselves on monitor > #4 and size themselves according to monitor #1, or some other > mismatching. Well, that's obviously a bug. (Presumably the programmer didn't expect there to be more than one screen, or at least not screens of different sizes.) > Or, I alt-tab away from something, come back in, and it resizes itself > to a different screen size. > > There is no valid way for an application to read my mind and size > itself. Attempting to query my screen size seems to just make things > worse in a lot of situations. You still haven't answered the question: Where should the initial window size come from? Does your window manager tell the application how large a window should be? And if it does, can you as a user configure that? I don't think mine (xfce) does that. (I guess tiling WMs generally do that, but I've never used one.) hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. |_|_) || | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-30 19:18:22 -0500, Igor Korot wrote: > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 6:59 PM Peter J. Holzer wrote: > > On 2020-10-31 10:02:12 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > > > I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know > > > best and decide that they own the entire screen. > > > > So, assuming the user is invoking the application for the first time, > > how should an application determine how much of the screen it should > > use? It has to make some choice, and any hard-coded value is almost > > certainly wrong. So why should an application not use the screen size as > > one factor? > > It is not up to application. > It is up to the underlying layout system to decide. This only works if all the GUI elements are of fixed size. If you are writing a MUA, for example, there are several elements which are essentially of arbitrary size: A list or tree of mailboxes. A list (or forest) of mails in the current mailbox. A pane to display the current mail. To size these properly you have to know what kind of information is going to be displayed. Depending on the screen size it may be better to only show one of them at a time. The application programmer knows this. The layout system doesn't. This should also be configurable by the user, which again means that the application has to a) provide a configuration UI and b) has to be able to set the layout the way the user configured it. Layout systems are important and useful. But they are tools, they can't do everything by themselves. In the end the application programmer has to decide how to use them. hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. |_|_) || | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-30 20:08:35 -0700, jf...@ms4.hinet.net wrote: > What's wrong the OP's question? Why can't just answer it? Igor already answered it: There is no best way in Python, because it depends on the framework (and there are many frameworks). hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. |_|_) || | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 10:44 PM Random832 wrote: > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020, at 20:18, Igor Korot wrote: > > Hi, > > > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 6:59 PM Peter J. Holzer wrote: > > > So, assuming the user is invoking the application for the first time, > > > how should an application determine how much of the screen it should > > > use? It has to make some choice, and any hard-coded value is almost > > > certainly wrong. So why should an application not use the screen size as > > > one factor? > > > > It is not up to application. > > It is up to the underlying layout system to decide. > > What is a "layout system"? I don't think such a thing exists, in general, for > positioning top-level windows on major platforms. Each application has to > write its own, and it is reasonable for the layout system itself [which, as > I've pointed out, is part of the application - there is no such thing as a > system service] to need access to this information. This one is for "JAVAsucks" - https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visual.html This one is for wxWidgets - https://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.0/overview_sizer.html This one is for Qt - https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/layout.html This one is for GTK - https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/LayoutContainers.html Are you still going to argue "it does not exist"? Every cross-platform has a layout system otherwise it will a burden to write cross-platform apps. Thank you Thank you. > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 2:43 PM Random832 wrote: > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020, at 20:18, Igor Korot wrote: > > Hi, > > > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 6:59 PM Peter J. Holzer wrote: > > > So, assuming the user is invoking the application for the first time, > > > how should an application determine how much of the screen it should > > > use? It has to make some choice, and any hard-coded value is almost > > > certainly wrong. So why should an application not use the screen size as > > > one factor? > > > > It is not up to application. > > It is up to the underlying layout system to decide. > > What is a "layout system"? I don't think such a thing exists, in general, for > positioning top-level windows on major platforms. Each application has to > write its own, and it is reasonable for the layout system itself [which, as > I've pointed out, is part of the application - there is no such thing as a > system service] to need access to this information. > Window managers most certainly do exist, and they are something that the user, not the application, controls. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Fri, Oct 30, 2020, at 20:18, Igor Korot wrote: > Hi, > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 6:59 PM Peter J. Holzer wrote: > > So, assuming the user is invoking the application for the first time, > > how should an application determine how much of the screen it should > > use? It has to make some choice, and any hard-coded value is almost > > certainly wrong. So why should an application not use the screen size as > > one factor? > > It is not up to application. > It is up to the underlying layout system to decide. What is a "layout system"? I don't think such a thing exists, in general, for positioning top-level windows on major platforms. Each application has to write its own, and it is reasonable for the layout system itself [which, as I've pointed out, is part of the application - there is no such thing as a system service] to need access to this information. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
What's wrong the OP's question? Why can't just answer it? --Jach -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 10:57 AM Peter J. Holzer wrote: > > On 2020-10-31 10:02:12 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > > On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 9:55 AM flaskee via Python-list > > wrote: > > > I have done all of this resizing and layout stuff before. > > > > > > I just ignored the grouchy user with the hate over me wanting screensize. > > > (every list has one of those types, eh? :-) > > > > > > Screensize, in part, determines the aspect ratio calcs to dynamically > > > resize and place the components on the screen. > > > > > > > So what would you do if it turns out that my screen is 5440 x 2104? > > That's what mine is right now. > > That depends on the application. > > If for example the application is in image viewer and the image to be > viewed is 4576x3432 pixels large, that wouldn't fit on the screen. > Assuming 200 pixels of vertical chrome (title bar, window borders, menu > bar and/or buttons), the image would have to be resized to (at most) > 2539x1904 pixels. So the window would be sized to accommodate that. > > (If you use a multi-screen setup, the calculation should be based on > the current screen, of course, not on the combined size of all screens) > But what is the "current screen"? That's the problem. MANY applications (mostly games) decide to put themselves on monitor #4 and size themselves according to monitor #1, or some other mismatching. Or, I alt-tab away from something, come back in, and it resizes itself to a different screen size. There is no valid way for an application to read my mind and size itself. Attempting to query my screen size seems to just make things worse in a lot of situations. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-30 at 20:47:50 -0400, songbird wrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: > ... > > I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know > > best and decide that they own the entire screen. It is incredibly > > annoying. > > do you object to a window being put in the approximate > center of the screen? At times, yes. At my last place of employment, I had a lot of screen real estate. It's very annoying to be working in a corner of it and have some kind of modal dialog pop up way over there in the middle of the screen. In a dual screen setup when the screens are the same, "the center of the screen" spans two physical screens. If the screens are different, then a window "in the center of the screen" might not even be fully visible (e.g., two 1920x1080 screens, one portrait and one landscape, positioned to form an "L"). -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 11:51 AM songbird wrote: > > Chris Angelico wrote: > ... > > I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know > > best and decide that they own the entire screen. It is incredibly > > annoying. > > do you object to a window being put in the approximate > center of the screen? > If that's where my window manager chooses to put it, great! The application just says "I want a window of this size" and the window manager decides where that should go. The application doesn't. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 7:52 PM songbird wrote: > > Chris Angelico wrote: > ... > > I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know > > best and decide that they own the entire screen. It is incredibly > > annoying. > > do you object to a window being put in the approximate > center of the screen? As a matter of fact I do. On Windows there is something called CW_USEDEFAULT. I'm sure that other OS/toolkits have something similar. And if not - there is always "Maximize()" and/or Center() and if this is not desirable then let the layout system decide. Thank you. > > > songbird > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Chris Angelico wrote: ... > I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know > best and decide that they own the entire screen. It is incredibly > annoying. do you object to a window being put in the approximate center of the screen? songbird -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 6:59 PM Peter J. Holzer wrote: > > On 2020-10-31 10:02:12 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > > On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 9:55 AM flaskee via Python-list > > wrote: > > > I have done all of this resizing and layout stuff before. > > > > > > I just ignored the grouchy user with the hate over me wanting screensize. > > > (every list has one of those types, eh? :-) > > > > > > Screensize, in part, determines the aspect ratio calcs to dynamically > > > resize and place the components on the screen. > > > > > > > So what would you do if it turns out that my screen is 5440 x 2104? > > That's what mine is right now. > > That depends on the application. > > If for example the application is in image viewer and the image to be > viewed is 4576x3432 pixels large, that wouldn't fit on the screen. > Assuming 200 pixels of vertical chrome (title bar, window borders, menu > bar and/or buttons), the image would have to be resized to (at most) > 2539x1904 pixels. So the window would be sized to accommodate that. > > (If you use a multi-screen setup, the calculation should be based on > the current screen, of course, not on the combined size of all screens) > > > > I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know > > best and decide that they own the entire screen. > > So, assuming the user is invoking the application for the first time, > how should an application determine how much of the screen it should > use? It has to make some choice, and any hard-coded value is almost > certainly wrong. So why should an application not use the screen size as > one factor? It is not up to application. It is up to the underlying layout system to decide. Thank you. > > hp > > -- >_ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. > |_|_) || > | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing > __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 12:56:30AM +0100, Peter J. Holzer wrote: So, assuming the user is invoking the application for the first time, how should an application determine how much of the screen it should use? It has to make some choice, and any hard-coded value is almost certainly wrong. So why should an application not use the screen size as one factor? I have been following this discussion with some interest (except for the grumpy parts ~(:>)) ), and have wondered this same thing. Is there any good guidance on how to answer this question? Or should it be up to the combination of GUI toolkit and OS being used? It seems that if the programmer does nothing, some default size is generated. As a user I have not been too concerned about the size presented upon first using a program. What gets my dander up is what happens *after* I set the size I prefer. Many programs do not store this preference for future runs of the program or even during the same session when a new window is generated of the exact same type. A Windows-based application I use for work constantly annoys me in this regard, especially when I am working at home on my (not as wide as Chris') ultra-wide monitor: I open external beam planning window for patient #1, resize it. Open same for next patient -- must resize once again (...and again, and again, ...). -- Wishing you only the best, boB Stepp -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-31 10:02:12 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote: > On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 9:55 AM flaskee via Python-list > wrote: > > I have done all of this resizing and layout stuff before. > > > > I just ignored the grouchy user with the hate over me wanting screensize. > > (every list has one of those types, eh? :-) > > > > Screensize, in part, determines the aspect ratio calcs to dynamically > > resize and place the components on the screen. > > > > So what would you do if it turns out that my screen is 5440 x 2104? > That's what mine is right now. That depends on the application. If for example the application is in image viewer and the image to be viewed is 4576x3432 pixels large, that wouldn't fit on the screen. Assuming 200 pixels of vertical chrome (title bar, window borders, menu bar and/or buttons), the image would have to be resized to (at most) 2539x1904 pixels. So the window would be sized to accommodate that. (If you use a multi-screen setup, the calculation should be based on the current screen, of course, not on the combined size of all screens) > I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know > best and decide that they own the entire screen. So, assuming the user is invoking the application for the first time, how should an application determine how much of the screen it should use? It has to make some choice, and any hard-coded value is almost certainly wrong. So why should an application not use the screen size as one factor? hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. |_|_) || | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
> Funny thing about complaints... you don't hear any from people who > just uninstall your app and move right on with their lives. > > Multi-monitor situations are pretty common. Since you don't seem to > care about them, I no longer care about your app. Whatever it is, I > don't need it. > > ChrisA Funny thing about people who bitch and complain and offer no help, on these kinds of lists, I don't need them either. You have No idea what the app is, No idea how I handle multi-monitors, etc. But you have your little opinion anyway. I am horribly crushed that you won't use my app(s) /s Bye, bye. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 6:24 PM Chris Angelico wrote: > > On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 10:17 AM flaskee via Python-list > wrote: > > > > > > I'm closing in on the screen width/height, at least. > > > > > > In odd screen sizes or multi-monitor situations, > > I make the best guess, > > but allow the user to alter things, > > via preferences. > > > > No complaints in 10 years. > > So there's that. > > > > Funny thing about complaints... you don't hear any from people who > just uninstall your app and move right on with their lives. > > Multi-monitor situations are pretty common. Since you don't seem to > care about them, I no longer care about your app. Whatever it is, I > don't need it. Exactly. And since most of such setups are different DPIs it actually becomes more fun. Especially since some applications tend to save and restore their positions (not saying this is the case here, but...). But windows positioning/layout never should be hardcoded and it should depend on some kind of layout system. All cross-platform toolkit does it - JAVA, wxWidgets, GTK, Qt. And so from what I understand - the OP is just trying to re-invent the wheel. All I can say is - every tool is different.And whatever was good 20 years ago, today is completely obsolete. Good luck to him. > > ChrisA > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 10:17 AM flaskee via Python-list wrote: > > > I'm closing in on the screen width/height, at least. > > > In odd screen sizes or multi-monitor situations, > I make the best guess, > but allow the user to alter things, > via preferences. > > No complaints in 10 years. > So there's that. > Funny thing about complaints... you don't hear any from people who just uninstall your app and move right on with their lives. Multi-monitor situations are pretty common. Since you don't seem to care about them, I no longer care about your app. Whatever it is, I don't need it. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
I'm closing in on the screen width/height, at least.
In odd screen sizes or multi-monitor situations,
I make the best guess,
but allow the user to alter things,
via preferences.
No complaints in 10 years.
So there's that.
# For MacOS Code:
import AppKit [(screen.frame().size.width, screen.frame().size.height) for
screen in AppKit.NSScreen.screens()]
$ For Windows Code:
from win32api import GetSystemMetrics print("Width =", GetSystemMetrics(0))
print("Height =", GetSystemMetrics(1))
# QT Code
from PySide import QtGui
dw=QtGui.QDesktopWidget()
dw.screenGeometry()
dw.availableGeometry() # this is a sub rect of screenGeometry because it e.g.
ignores the space occupied by the task bar on Windows
# GDK, GTK
from gi.repository import Gdk
s = Gdk.Screen.get_default()
print(s.get_width())
print(s.get_height())
# --
from gi.repository import Gdk, Gtk
# Replace w with the GtkWindow of your application
w = Gtk.Window()
# Get the screen from the GtkWindow
s = w.get_screen()
# Using the screen of the Window, the monitor it's on can be identified
m = s.get_monitor_at_window(s.get_active_window())
# Then get the geometry of that monitor
monitor = s.get_monitor_geometry(m)
# This is an example output
print("Height: %s, Width: %s" % (monitor.height, monitor.width))
--
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Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 9:55 AM flaskee via Python-list wrote: > I have done all of this resizing and layout stuff before. > > I just ignored the grouchy user with the hate over me wanting screensize. > (every list has one of those types, eh? :-) > > Screensize, in part, determines the aspect ratio calcs to dynamically > resize and place the components on the screen. > So what would you do if it turns out that my screen is 5440 x 2104? That's what mine is right now. I add my voice to those who detest applications that think they know best and decide that they own the entire screen. It is incredibly annoying. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
βββ Original Message βββ On Friday, October 30, 2020 5:31 PM, Igor Korot wrote: > Hi, > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 4:20 PM Random832 random...@fastmail.com wrote: > > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020, at 12:05, Grant Edwards wrote: > > > > > Why do you think that's something your application needs to know? > > > I hate applications that think just because they've been started > > > they now own the entire computer and everything reachable from it. > > > All you need to know is how big your application window is. The user's > > > available screen size is none of your business. > > > > The application decides how big the application window is. The user can > > resize it, but there's no reason for the screen size not to be one of the > > inputs considered for the initial choice. > > Nope. > It is nNOT up to application. > It is either up to the developer (if he calls Maximize() ) on the main > frame, or the OS if the main frame is using defaults. > > Thank you. > Exactly Igor & random832. I have done all of this resizing and layout stuff before. I just ignored the grouchy user with the hate over me wanting screensize. (every list has one of those types, eh? :-) Screensize, in part, determines the aspect ratio calcs to dynamically resize and place the components on the screen. Anyway, I'm pushing on to do this under python. With, or without, Mr. Grouchy. Igor --- I think you asked why for portrait vs landscape? It is so that when the user flips a phone or tablet to the side (landscape), or straight up/down (portrait) that the widgets can be dynamically resized & re-positioned to fit. In actionscript a RESIZE event fires when flipping to the side or back, that can then be reacted to, to reposition things. I just need to re-figure this all out under Python, et al. Thanks -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-30 16:31:25 -0500, Igor Korot wrote: > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 4:20 PM Random832 wrote: > > > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020, at 12:05, Grant Edwards wrote: > > > Why do you think that's something your application needs to know? > > > > > > I _hate_ applications that think just because they've been started > > > they now own the entire computer and everything reachable from it. > > > > > > All you need to know is how big your application window is. The user's > > > available screen size is none of your business. > > > > The application decides how big the application window is. The user > > can resize it, but there's no reason for the screen size not to be > > one of the inputs considered for the initial choice. > > Nope. > It is nNOT up to application. > It is either up to the developer The developer writes the application. The application doesn't decide to do anything it hasn't been programmed to do. So saying "it is not up the the application, it is up to the developer" doesn't make any sense. Oh, and I just realized that "application" is ambiguous. It could mean the program, or it could be what the program is used for. Of course the developer should consider the latter when writing the former. > (if he calls Maximize() ) on the main frame, An application shouldn't do that unless explicitely directed to by the user. > or the OS if the main frame is using defaults. I'm not sure if OS's even have a default window size. In any case, one size doesn't fit all. There are many cases where the initial size should depend on the application: * A terminal emulator would make the window large enough for a typical terminal size (e.g. 80x25 characters) plus chrome. * An image viewer would make it large enough for the image, but not larger than the screen (if the image is larger than the screen (quite probable for photos) it will be scaled down). * A MUA would make it large enough for a list of mailboxes, a list of mails and one mail in some default pane configuration, but again not larger than the screen. * A media player would make it large enough for the playlist and some chrome. etc. -- _ | Peter J. Holzer| Story must make more sense than reality. |_|_) || | | | h...@hjp.at |-- Charles Stross, "Creative writing __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!" signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 4:20 PM Random832 wrote: > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020, at 12:05, Grant Edwards wrote: > > Why do you think that's something your application needs to know? > > > > I _hate_ applications that think just because they've been started > > they now own the entire computer and everything reachable from it. > > > > All you need to know is how big your application window is. The user's > > available screen size is none of your business. > > The application decides how big the application window is. The user can > resize it, but there's no reason for the screen size not to be one of the > inputs considered for the initial choice. Nope. It is nNOT up to application. It is either up to the developer (if he calls Maximize() ) on the main frame, or the OS if the main frame is using defaults. Thank you. > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On Fri, Oct 30, 2020, at 12:05, Grant Edwards wrote: > Why do you think that's something your application needs to know? > > I _hate_ applications that think just because they've been started > they now own the entire computer and everything reachable from it. > > All you need to know is how big your application window is. The user's > available screen size is none of your business. The application decides how big the application window is. The user can resize it, but there's no reason for the screen size not to be one of the inputs considered for the initial choice. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 12:26 PM Grant Edwards wrote: > > On 2020-10-30, flaskee via Python-list wrote: > > > What is the best approach to determining the user's available > > screensize, when they open your python application? > > Why do you think that's something your application needs to know? > > I _hate_ applications that think just because they've been started > they now own the entire computer and everything reachable from it. > > All you need to know is how big your application window is. The user's > available screen size is none of your business. In addition - what if the user decides to change the monitor DPI? Then the screen size you retrieved will be useless... Thank you. > > -- > Grant > > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
On 2020-10-30, flaskee via Python-list wrote: > What is the best approach to determining the user's available > screensize, when they open your python application? Why do you think that's something your application needs to know? I _hate_ applications that think just because they've been started they now own the entire computer and everything reachable from it. All you need to know is how big your application window is. The user's available screen size is none of your business. -- Grant -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Best way to determine user's screensize?
Hi, On Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 10:59 AM flaskee via Python-list < python-list@python.org> wrote: > Perhaps a more tactical approach would best to figure > out how to do cross-platform python apps. > > What is the best approach to determining the user's available screensize, > when they open your python application? > It depends on the framework you are using... Thank you. > Note that the "desktop" application could be running on Android, iOS, > MacOS, Windows or Linux (I think that I understand how to handle it for > browser-based things.) > > As close to an all Python answer as possible, would be optimal. > > Thank you! > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
