Precise Pangolin

Posted by jay on Oct 22, 2011 in general, Ubuntu, Unity | 0 comments

That is the name of the next Ubuntu release. I am heading to Orlando (Florida) for a Unity design sprint where the designers and developers get to meet and talk about what is coming next. Should be fun!

Nux Sample Programs

Posted by jay on Oct 22, 2011 in general, nux | 0 comments

I am making some Nux sample programs available. The programs are currently available at this branch (lp:~jaytaoko/nux/nux-samples) but they will eventually get a proper location in launchpad. Nothing too fancy yet, but I will put all the demo I have in that program. Stay tuned.

Static Text View

Posted by jay on Oct 17, 2011 in general, nux | 0 comments

Displaying static text is absolutely necessary in any UI toolkit. Not only that, it is important to do it right. I have been working on the text view lately. It uses Pango/Cairo on Ubuntu and Direct2D/DirectWrite on Windows.

Text Formatting

I did some fixes in the StatictText class to make it better suited when it is used inside other views. For instance, the StaticText view may become larger or smaller according to size negotiation in a layout. However, its vertical size (the height) is determined by the size of the font. The StaticText view height cannot be controlled through the layout API. Its height is controlled by changing the size of the font.

The picture above, is showing the alignment of StatictText view in a vertical layout (VLayout). It also shows how the text appears with ellipsis if the StaticText view is too small to contain it. In the second line of text, the StaticText view maximum width has been forced to 250 pixels while the text inside occupies more than 250 pixels in width. Rather than cutting the text abruptly (or wrapping it), the rendering API (Cairo or DirectWrite) is showing ellipsis instead.