World: r3wp

Those wanting to influence VID resizing model  - http://www.rebol.net/wiki/GUI_Face_Sizing

----  Cross-posting from DevBase -----

window: view [t: text ""]


window is set to a gob which is useless to me.  t is totally lost 
and I can't modify it.  What to do?!?

you can't modify 't outside the layout. binding stuff.

That doesn't make sense.  Code that is not specifically *in* the 
layout can't modify faces/gobs/etc???

Don't be ridiculous. 't exists somewhere - so find out where.

Ammon, you can pass 't to a function used inside the layout, if you 
want. I'm genuinely not sure where in the system the face would be 
stored as I've not encountered a situation yet where that would be 
needed.

Oh yes, looks like Ammon's right, actually. Each Face has a reference 
to its associated Gob, but the Gob does not have a reference to the 
Face. So if you only have the gob, you can't get to the face, where 
the variables like 't can be found.
Just reading the source - correct me if I'm wrong.

Yep, I remember I came across this before, and I didn't like this 
behaviour either.

It makes debugging and learning the system more difficult.

I'm not sure it does. It's not meant to be poked and hacked like 
VID can be. You go through proper channels, because the proper channels 
are actually there now. :-) Also the built in debugging functions 
can provide a lot of information.

not meant to be poked and hacked
 ===> yeah right !   :-)

Anton, the style actors, reactors SET-FACE, GET-FACE, SET-FACET and 
GET-FACET are there to affect the given face in the way it is intended 
to be, encapsulating the functionality in the right places, so no 
hacking is needed. You just create a new style with altered functionality, 
if you need it.

no hacking is needed
 - this just seems naiive.

I guess you haven't tried working with VID3.4 then.

You've obviously worked with it much more than me.

(It's obvious to me, anyway. I haven't done that much except a few 
experiments and reading here and there.)

I have, and the actors provide everything you need and you can be 
as elaborate as you need to be, process any events anywhere you like. 
There are even specific functions to override actors, in case you 
need to make a small addition to a big actor, when creating a derivative 
style. You can also create new actors. This is not much different 
from what VID3 had, except it's easier to program.

Ok, so how would you modify Ammon's example so the text facet/gob 
can be inspected ?

the question is why he wants to inspect it.

(in that, there may be a different, but just as good a method to 
do it)

Can you do it, or not ?

but other than that, enabling debugging lets you see the inner workings 
of a face

http://rebol.net/wiki/GUI_howto_debug

So Ammon's example could be modified to:

	view [t: text "" debug]

yes

which dumps the face contents.

also:

view [t: text do [probe face]]

dumps the gob as well.

No, it doesn't (?)  The gob is usually returned by VIEW and molded 
by the console..

there is also whole instrumentation for debugging purposes, so ...

Anton, ah, it can't do that from a text label with nothing in it, 
of course. Try something like BUTTON instead.

Custom debugging print outs.

What if you just want to print the size of the TEXT face, for instance?

How would you do that? (Not dump the whole face.)

Say, on init.

Go to the style code and add the print there.

(note that more debug outputs can be added, if some are needed)

I have a style that displays its current size inside the View window 
at all times. Perhaps this can be added as a debugging feature.

http://rebol.hmkdesign.dk/files/r3/gui/061.png

debug: [style make] ?

http://rebol.net/wiki/GUI_howto_debug#Runtime_Debug

Modifying the style code could be quite uncomfortable, when you just 
want some information quickly. I don't want to have to mess with 
files just to print a bit of custom debug info.
More debug outputs could alleviate this discomfort somewhat.

I think it's possible to create a debug function that returns a facet 
for a given face when a given event happens, like:

get-debug 'my-face 'text-body 'on-make

Yes, you can use DO with BUTTON:

	view [t: text "hello" button do [dump-face t ]]

dumps the TEXT face when the button is clicked.

Henrik - why don't you release your DocBase resizing doc? :-)

Pekr, because I know Carl will ignore it. In fact he just posted 
something like that on rebdev.

I think that nothing is set in stone, ne? It all started with the 
lack of decomposition from gob to face, no? Maybe the system could 
keep the list of references somewhere, no? Or simply face could be 
extended with the list of gobs it is composed from?

Gobs that are the top gob for a face have a reference to the face 
in something like gob/data, as I recall.

I want to get to 't because I'm trying to hack together a GUI for 
DevBase because the console client is painful to use and I thought 
this might be a good way to introduce myself to some of the internal 
workings of the new GUI.  I want to redefine "say" in the chat.r 
to update ''t with the text it would normally print.


To have changed what VIEW returns such that I can't actually get 
to the face produced is unbelievably confusing.  There must be a 
good reason for it though, what is it? 


You do realize that if I have no way creating a pointer to a face 
then I can't use get-face, set-face, etc. on it don't you???

I'm familiar with the fact that set-words are being defined in parent-face/faces 
which is why I used window: view [...]  I thought I was going to 
be looking in window/faces to get to t but View is giving me a gob 
instead of the face that I need.

Will not it be more difficult to get to some internals anyway, once 
modules are implemented?

Yes, once modules are done certain internal things will be locked 
away but that has nothing to do with my question here.