[OT] Poll: What does it mean for 1 rect to be 'within' a certain distance of another rect?

[Paul Dupuis]

Alex,

Thank you. As I just posted, I think I am seeing that *most* people 
think of the distance between 2 rects as the distance between nearest 
edges or vertices which is the same as the smallest distance between any 
two points.


On 2/15/2021 7:53 PM, Alex Tweedly via use-livecode wrote:
>
> On 15/02/2021 23:21, Sean Cole (Pi) via use-livecode wrote:
>> Hi,
>> No point reinventing the wheel..
>
> But most of those links actually did not have this particular wheel, 
> or anything like it.
>
> The exception was the last one (programmerssought.com) which had an 
> ugly, inefficient and lengthy (45 lines in Python) solution. [OK, that 
> 45 includs blank and comments :-) !!
>
> For me, a more precise problem specification is:
>
> Given two rectangles (in regular Livecode format), the distance 
> between them is :
>
>  - if they touch or overlap, distance is zero.
>
>  - otherwise, it's the smallest distance from any point in R1 to any 
> point in R2.
>
> Which leads to a simple solution
>
>> function rdist R1, R2
>>    local DX, DY
>>    put max( item 1 of R1 - item 3 of R2, item 1 of R2 - item 3 of R1, 
>> 0) into DX
>>    put max( item 2 of R1 - item 4 of R2, item 2 of R2 - item 4 of R1, 
>> 0) into DY
>>    return sqrt( DX*DX + DY * DY)
>> end rdist
>>
> Alex.
>
>
>> Lots of other way. Distance between two near or far edges. distance 
>> between
>> corners, distance to centers, or area median, area of space between,
>> overal usage area minus the area used by the two rectangles. Math is 
>> fun.
>> Keeps us in business.
>>
>> Google (distance between two rectangles):
>>
>> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4978323/how-to-calculate-distance-between-two-rectangles-context-a-game-in-lua 
>>
>>
>> https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2724537/finding-the-clear-spacing-distance-between-two-rectangles 
>>
>>
>> https://www.wyzant.com/resources/answers/583373/finding-the-distance-between-two-rectangles 
>>
>>
>> https://www.programmersought.com/article/44554760896/
>>
>> etc
>>
>> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 22:53, Paul Dupuis via use-livecode <
>> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>
>>> This is an Off Topic informal poll of sorts, but related to LiveCode as
>>> I am writing a LiveCode expression to determine if 2 arbitrary
>>> rectangles (r1,r2) are with some distance d (in px) of one another. In
>>> considering this problem, the questions comes up: What is meant by
>>> rectangles being within a distance d of one another. What is the 'd'
>>> measured from?
>>>
>>> center to center? Easiest is many ways, but I don't think this is what
>>> most people would think of.
>>>
>>> adjacent edge to adjacent edge? This is harder (I think), but I think
>>> this is what more people intuitively think of. To me, implicit in the
>>> visual concept of 2 rects being within some distance of one another is
>>> that they are NOT overlapping, but that some gap exists between the
>>> nearest adjacent edges?
>>>
>>> Something else? What does 2 rects  being 'within' d pixels of one
>>> another mean to you, if not one of the two above options?
>>>
>>> Maybe there is a exact mathematical definition of what 2 rectangles
>>> being within distance d of one another is, but, if there is, I am
>>> unfamiliar with it.
>>>
>>>
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