Vectors

Vectors is an addon to help UI Creators make their work available on more resolutions with less problems to them and their users.

Short Description

You can place any registered window relative to another window
while repsecting the users resolution and UI scale,
without destroying the UI setup. You'll only need to create your UI once per monitor ratio.

Wothor made a Video of Vectors in which he explains the core functions and I wrote an Enduser FAQ.
Please read the UI Creator FAQ if you consider publishing your UI with this Addon.

Complete Description

Basics

You can create and delete Profiles, to manage different "sets".
Every Profile inlcudes the Subprofiles for all monitor ratios.
The Subprofile matching your current resolution ratio will be loaded an can then be edited.
You can supervise any registered window in terms of placement, scaling and size.
Every window that is managed by Vectors will be automatically unregistered from Mythics Layout Editor to avoid interference between these addons.
All your changes you make in Vectors are shown instantly on the screen, but you can reset your current window to the state it had when you switched to it.

Placement

The placement can be specified relatively from any other window that is registered.ßß
The distance between this windows won't be in pixels but in an internal value between "-1" and "1".
That way we can always calculate the correct pixel value for the current resolution/scale combination.
The ">>" button will move your window by 1 pixel of your current resolution.
The ">>>" button is equivalent to 10 pixels and the ">" button moves the window by 1/5 pixel which is for finetuning.
You'll get the best results if you create the settings in the highest resolution available for the ratio and then fine-tune the positions on some lower resolutions.

Scaling

If you let Vectors manage the scale of a window, the window will always occupy the same space regarding the resolution.
The user can freely change the UI scale without destroying his entire UI setup, because all space relevant elements keep their size.
That is useful for backroundpanels or buttons that should excatly match into a prepared backround area.
The problem of this approach is that people with a low resolutions need a bigger UI scale, so they can read text.
Vectors try's to help through a mechanism that is called "minimum scale".
Whenever the window would get too small on the screen, the minimum scale would prevent further shrinking.
Ofcourse this minimal value would need to be obtained by experimenting with a low resolution monitor and the desired window.
I hope you have a helpful userbase for that task.

Size

This is only recomended for users who know what they are doing and have made a safty copy of their UI before.
You can add a second anchor in Vectors to define the size of a window relatively to other windows.
Be careful to what you set it.
If you define the bottomright corner to be over the topleft corner for example,
the window will disappear and won't come back by deleting the anchor.
You'll have to define a sane second anchor to see the window again.
The UI Creator FAQ will help you understanding what elements to consider.

API

API description , so you can register your own windows, code a better frontend than me or automatically Import/Export parts of profiles.

Facts

Date created
Sep 06, 2010
Categories
Last update
Mar 09, 2011
Development stage
Release
License
All Rights Reserved
Curse link
Vectors
Downloads
1,697
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