resizing lcd inside bpatcher

Not 100% sure, but I think it's not easily possible right now. Many times I've thought about requesting a feature for bpatcher to be alerted whenever the bpatcher is resized. It would be extremely useful for making GUI abstractions.

Right now the only thing I think you can do is regularly poll a javascript to find out the size of the containing patch. But that would be quite inefficient. Better to have some mechanism built into bpatcher. Like a special object (thisbpatcher?) that could output info about the bpatcher whenever it changes.

If someone knows a better way, please let us know.

That's what I thought... unfortunately I also know nothing about javascript....

when I resize the bpatcher I get the delta for width and height as well as overall width and height as a "help" message (see attachment). Is there any way I can access that information from within the bpatcher or access it period?

Here's a javascript that will output the [bpatcher] position and dimensions. You can use this by patching in a [prepend patcher_rect 0 0] between the left outlet and the object you want to have follow the [bpatcher] size (assuming it is located in the top left corner of the [bpatcher]). Unfortunately it doesn't work automatically, you have to send it a bang to get the values. I hope it helps.

lh

outlets=2;

function bang()
{
if(this.patcher.box){
corners=this.patcher.box.rect
l=corners[0]
t=corners[1]
r=corners[2]
b=corners[3]
width=r-l
height=b-t
outlet(1, corners);
outlet(0, width, height);
}
}

a first quick test works like a charm. thanks so much...

Quote: thereishopeforus@hotmail.com wrote on Sat, 03 January 2009 18:41
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> Unfortunately it doesn't work automatically, you have to send it a bang to get the values.

That's my issue with this approach. If you want it to work automatically, you'd have to setup some sort of polling with a metro banging this javascript. If you have a lot of copies of a bpatcher that seems like a waste of CPU.

The Max environment knows exactly what's going on, so if there was an new object like [thisbpatcher], it could automatically output the current size only when a resize occurred. [jsui] has an onresize() method for exactly this purpose. Bpatcher needs one... is it a reasonable feature request?

For now, the best compromise might be to put a little resize button in the corner of a bpatcher, and when you click that button then the bpatcher could bang the javascript and resize itself. That's not too bad of a solution.

Any way to use thispatcher and script the bpatch size programatically for your needs? Maybe you've looked into this, there's no js in this case. The example is super-simple and only has an empty bpatch, with a scripting name. Use the numbers to change the size, which can keep any aspect ratio you want, plus you can then use the same numbers to size the lcd in the bpatch (thru an inlet or a send, the script size command to the thispatcher within the bpatch). This doesn't answer the question of being able to access the (delta) etc. info when resizing in edit mode, but on the other hand, you can give resizing capabilities to the end user...or preset and forget it!

Quote: seejayjames wrote on Sun, 04 January 2009 16:01
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> Any way to use thispatcher and script the bpatch size programatically for your needs?

I don't really think that helps in my case.

I decided to work through this and come up with the best solution that seems to be possible right now. Put the attached folder on your Max file path and check out bpatcher-resize-example.maxpat

There's resize handle in the lower right that you can use to resize the bpatcher. It uses some mousestate polling and javascript to resize all the GUI objects inside the bpatcher. I think this is basically what the OP was asking for too.

My issue is I don't want that resize handle, and I don't want things to be resizable when the patcher is locked. I want to make some reusable GUI components with bpatchers, and resize the bpatcher like usual while editing and have it act like this resize handle. I really don't think this is possible right now unless you constantly poll the javascript object, which is horribly inefficient.

I keep thinking this would be easily solved by the addition of a new object for this purpose...

Quote: stefantiedje wrote on Mon, 12 January 2009 01:33
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> My long time solution, I can happily live with, is to get the
> position/size with a mynamber (has a position output), then resize
> according to that.
> Instead of a useless polling, I would just need to delete the bpatcher
> after a resize and immediately undo, or send it a bang.
>
> This is demonstrated with my latest St.ools for example with St.Level~.

Nice!

Yes, this seems to be the best possible solution right now. I think I will start doing things this way too. Thanks.

BUT... I can't help feel spoiled by Max 5's great GUI features: all these objects that are stretchable and resolution independent and you can see the changes as you resize and very easily put together nice interfaces in such an interactive way. It's really one of the things I like best about Max, GUI building is a joy compared to text-based languages.

So I still request a thisbpatcher object be added that could output the bpatcher's dimensions when the size changes, so I can do this on the fly as the object resizes with no delete/undo. It will make the workflow smoother, and it's generally so smooth in Max 5 I want to keep the workflow as good as possible. I want my bpatcher abstractions to be as close to a "real" or jsui object as possible in terms of resizing behavior.

I realize this is pretty nitpicky and it won't be a priority. Anyway, I've put the idea out there so I'll shutup for now and use Stefan's solution.