miglayout: how to ignore a component height

Question

Is there any way to tell MigLayout to ignore a component's height?

Here's a test example:

I have an oversized component (the "big" button in the upper right) in the first row, and a JPanel which has a more-or-less triangular shape that spans the whole 2nd row.

I would like to have MigLayout ignore the height of the "big" button when choosing a size for the first row, because I know it's ok for it to overlap with my 2nd-row component.

How can I do this?

import java.awt.Dimension;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import net.miginfocom.swing.MigLayout;

public class IgnoreComponentHeight {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        JFrame jf = new JFrame("ignore component height test");
        JPanel p = new JPanel();

        p.setLayout(new MigLayout("","[] [] [] []", ""));
        p.add(new JButton("one"), "");
        p.add(new JButton("two"), "");
        p.add(new JButton("three"), "");
        JButton big = new JButton("big");
        big.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(40,80));
        p.add(big, "wrap");

        JPanel tripanel = new JPanel();
        tripanel.setLayout(new MigLayout("","[] [] [] []", ""));
        int k = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < 4; ++i)
        {
            for (int j = 0; j <= i; ++j)
            {
                tripanel.add(new JButton("tri"+k), j == i ? "wrap" : "");
                ++k;
            }
        }

        p.add(tripanel, "span,wrap");

        jf.setContentPane(p);
        jf.pack();
        jf.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        jf.setVisible(true);        
    }
}

Answer 1

Maybe what you're looking for is "spany 2" or absolute positioning like "pos visual.x2-pref-5 5".

Check out the MigLayout web page and load up the swing demo. Then go to the absolute positioning section. You can right click on the components and experiment with the constraints there, which will help you dial into what you really want.

p.add(new JButton("three"), "wrap");
JButton big = new JButton("big");
big.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(40, 80));
p.add(big, "pos visual.x2-pref-5 5");