[Cuis] Display units and UI widgets in Morphic 3

[Juan Vuletich]

Hi Phil,

On 6/30/2015 10:27 PM, Phil (list) wrote:
> Juan,
>
> I vaguely recall previously having a discussion somewhere about unit
> scaling / high dpi but can't seem to find the thread.  Anyways, this
> question is specific to Morphic 3: from a UI creation standpoint is
> Morphic 3 still going to use pixel-based units or will some other unit
> of measure be used? i.e. if you design a UI and have say a 32x32
> button, is that going to need to be scaled up (understanding that this
> will be trivial for Morphic 3 to do) for high-dpi displays?  Is this
> even a Morphic concern or will it be up to Cuis as an environment to
> have a preference for display scaling?

In Morphic 3 you can use any unit you want for your Morphs. It is 
perfectly reasonable to use pixels, at your preferred zoom level and 
DPI. You can also use domain specific units.

The user is able to scale the World or any particular Morph to suit his 
needs or taste, much like you do in Google Maps, in Satellite mode.

> Related to this is the question of how much do you anticipate
> higher-level UI code needing to be reworked for Morphic 3? One
> of the many projects I've been playing around with giving things a bit
> of a face-lift (i.e. a logging framework that can handle non-textual
> data, grid and multi-element list pluggable morphs, visualization
> widgets, etc... sort of along the lines of what is being done in Pharo
> with the playground stuff) and am just wondering how far I should go
> with this work before seeing what's involved in migrating to Morphic 3?

In principle, there is no code rework needed. The local coordinates, 
locations, etc. are the standard in Cuis since a few years ago.

The difference is that Morphic 3 will make some new things possible, and 
others will be simpler. It will also give the user a better control on 
how to use the UI.

> (I did take a quick peek at the Morphic 3 package but didn't find
> answers as it looks like you're still working out the lower level
> details)
>
> Thanks,
> Phil

Well, but that experimental code already can draw essentially any Cuis 
morphic World. It is just some lower level details what is missing to 
make it the main graphics engine for Cuis.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich