Problems with layouting boxes in Rascal

Question

I have big problems with layouting dynamic generated Figures with figures in figures.

I expect the following:

• If I specifiy size() for a figure the figure will never get smaller. This is in the contract of size property.
• if I do pack it will rearrange the figures without making them smaller than specified size(). It will 'rearrange and draw a box arround it' (in terms that it is a new figure)
• If the whole figure cannot be displayed in the Eclipse window I get automatically (outer)scrollbars.

So if I execute this:

public void tester() { 
  list[Figure] list1 = []; 
   for ( i <- [0..3]) { 
      list[Figure] list2 = [];  
      list2 = list2 + box(size(30,200),fillColor("brown"));
      list2 = list2 + box(size(50,610),fillColor("black"));
      list2 = list2 + box(size(100,310),fillColor("gray"));
      list1 = list1 + pack(list2,gap(10),fillColor("red"));
   };
   render(pack(list1,gap(10),fillColor("blue")));
}

I expect something like this (or layout vertically I do not care), and if there is not enough room I expect scrollbars under and right of the figure:

However what I get is the following. But this is not what I asked for. I did not ask for individual scrollbars (I want outer scrollbars if needed). Also the blue and red border (because of gap) is not visible.

How do I get this more in line with what I expected, and why is it behaving as it is?

Answer 1

The critical issue seems to be that a size specification is missing in the inner pack. If you rewrite your code as follows things look much better:

public void tester() { 
  list[Figure] list1 = []; 
  for ( i <- [0..3]) { 
    list[Figure] list2 = [];  
    list2 = list2 + box(size(30,200),fillColor("brown"));
    list2 = list2 + box(size(50,610),fillColor("black"));
    list2 = list2 + box(size(100,310),fillColor("gray"));
    list1 = list1 + pack(list2,gap(10),size(200,500),fillColor("red"));
 };
 render(pack(list1,gap(10),fillColor("blue")));
}

The resulting figure is as follows (note that all packs have a scrollbar and the right one has been scrolled down a bit):

As a side note: the current handling of sizes and resizing is really confusing and we are working on a better solution.

Answer 2

I will go for a different visual presentation (came up with some other ideas). I played a few hours with pack-in-pack, and I still believe that packs-inside-packs are not correctly handled.

Jos