3WDevolution question

[Richard Gaskin]

William Prothero wrote:

 > Richard:
 > Here’s what I found on the palette thing. I’m no longer worried about
 > the backdrop because it was just me not seeing that there was a LC
 > toolbar menu item that would turn it off. In fact, I may have been
 > blaming Devo incorrectly, when it was LC’s responsibility.
 >
 > If you, in 9.0.1 RC 2 or 3, drag the 4W toolbar to the right, lift the
 > mouse, then drag it back to the left, I see it refusing to be dragged
 > fully to the left. In LC 8.2.0, it acts normally, but in  LC 9.0.1
 > RC3, it won’t return all the way left. It seems like it’s trying to
 > leave space for the IDE Tools palette, but it doesn’t matter whether
 > it’s visible or not.

I see what's happening there.  It appears the IDE team is attempting to 
use a floating palette in a highly unusual way: rather than floating on 
top of a document, it's assumed to be placed at the left and when it is 
the windowBoundingRect is adjusted so that no other windows can be 
placed in a way that overlap it.  When the tool palette is moved to any 
other location sufficiently away from the left edge, the 
windowBoundingRect is apparently restore to the normal bounds everyone 
normally expects.

You will find that the IDE's change to the windowBoundingRect affects 
all windows when using the maximize option for a window.

This affects the dragging of 4W devolution's window because I have a 
customized appearance with my own title bar, and have scripted the 
dragging behavior to account for the windowBoundingRect so the window 
cannot be submarined beneath the menu bar or the Dock.

In my own work, I spend relatively little time with the IDE's tool 
palette open. Layout normally occupies just a bit of up-front time, with 
most of my time spend scripting the objects I'd laid out.  And of course 
since the devo palette has its own controls for creating the two most 
commonly-used objects, buttons and fields, sometimes I go weeks without 
ever opening the IDE's tool palette at all.

And since devo makes it more convenient to open and close the IDE's tool 
palette with its generously-sized toggle buttons for the most common IDE 
windows, I find that when I do use the IDE's tool palette it's just to 
create an object or two and then I put it away again until I need it. 
It takes up a LOT of room for something used so seldom during the 
workflow; making it easy to access it ONLY WHEN I NEED IT was part of 
the motivation for making devo.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  http://fourthworld.com/products/devolution/