Let’s get into some technical details about how a layout engine works. We assume that we have a tree of elements that comprise the UI. Starting from the root node, we request […]
Core Layout Protocol API (UI Engine)
Fitting an image to its element frame
Images require various sizing modes to fit in a responsive layout. Here we’ll look at the relationship between the element and visual and the basic sizing options. I’ll also look at […]
What is a “box model”? (UI Element layout)
A box model describes how to measure an element for layout. It defines what size is and how it relates to the content, margin and padding. It may seem trivial, but clear […]
What is responsive layout?
A good UI design must accommodate the various device formats and resolutions that users have. Element placement cannot be absolute, but rather be constrained and expanded by the available space. Layouts […]
UI Engine Layout: Additive, Partitioned and Layered
Layout determines how children are positioned and sized within their parent element. There are three approaches to placing child elements within a parent: Additive: The children combine to define the size […]
UI Layout: Working with Pixels, Points and Density
Devices have various physical resolutions and densities. One phone may be 10cm wide and have 800pixels across, while another may be 8cm wide and have 1200pixels across. A UI engine needs to […]
Dissecting my Rusty Superhero Bots — The code review
I chose Rust as the language for the Botters of the Galaxy contest. My code structure was suitable enough to get me to the final league, but I had a few […]
UI Layout: Natural versus dependent size
Elements have either a natural size, a dependent size, or combination of the two. The size of an element influences its placement. The user and creator of a UI layout system must […]
Drawing a bitmap in the window (Leaf-SDL #2)
Read Update #1 Syntax Error I addressed two problems since last update: A bad error message, and an image loading error. The bad error message was triggered when an unknown symbol […]
Fixing some vector drawing issues
I fixed several issues with the vector drawing in Fuse. A few of them seemed somewhat obvious, so as with all such issues, I wonder why they were even there. In this […]
New Game: A quest for graphics (Leaf-SDL #1)
I’ve started a journey to make Leaf more visual. You may have seen some of my videos about complexity, complete with shaky mouse drawn lines. It’s simply not good enough, especially […]
Innocent growth of technical debt
I’ve spent the last several days unravelling the mystery of the Each feature in Fuse. It’s a powerhouse feature that has managed to accumulate a fair share of technical debt. Though in […]
Debugging a defect with a shared argument
While writing some error handling helpers, during my algorithm stream, I encountered a defect. It’s a tricky one dealing with the passing of shared arguments to functions in Leaf. After a lot […]
Should function arguments be reassignable or mutable?
Working on a defect in Leaf I had a question: should function arguments be reassignable within a function? Are they just like local variables, or should they be treated specially? It would […]
