Tab object - is it possible to control layout?

skrasms's icon

I am trying to make a tab object that overlaps a two dimensional grid. I would like to make the tabs line up with the grid underneath, but I don't see any way to change how the tab object automatically splits up rows and columns. If I have 16 total tabs it jumps from 1x16, 2x8, and so on depending on how I resize it. I would like to, for example, keep it 2x8 and re-size freely. Is that possible?

I basically want to be able to define a tab object based on 4 values:
total width in pixels
total height in pixels
number of rows
number of columns

Emmanuel Jourdan's icon

On 12 juil. 08, at 20:23, Aaron Faulstich wrote:

> I am trying to make a tab object that overlaps a two dimensional
> grid. I would like to make the tabs line up with the grid
> underneath, but I don't see any way to change how the tab object
> automatically splits up rows and columns. If I have 16 total tabs it
> jumps from 1x16, 2x8, and so on depending on how I resize it. I
> would like to, for example, keep it 2x8 and re-size freely. Is that
> possible?

Nope. The positioning is automatic. If you want to have only one row
though, you can uncheck the multiline attribute.

ej

skrasms's icon

That is too bad. In this case I want to get two columns.

While trying to find a way to cheat, I discovered that the number of rows created by the automatic system is dependent on font size. Bigger fonts allow the object to become taller before splitting into fewer columns. It offers an indirect way to control the divisions.

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

I was able to make this:

That is good enough for my needs.

Emmanuel Jourdan's icon

On 12 juil. 08, at 20:57, Aaron Faulstich wrote:

> That is too bad. In this case I want to get two columns.
>
> While trying to find a way to cheat, I discovered that the number of
> rows created by the automatic system is dependent on font size.
> Bigger fonts allow the object to become taller before splitting into
> fewer columns. It offers an indirect way to control the divisions.

Indeed, the positioning depends on the overall text size (number of
characters, fontface, fontsize...).

ej