Slicer3:UIDesign:WorkingProblems:SlicerFlexibleLayout:Architecture

Architecture design for Slicer flexible layouts

Back to Flexible Layouts Overview

Notes:

We discussed several ways of representing layouts including:

• html table style description

 <table name=A>
 <tr width=.5 height=.5>
   <td width=1.0 height=1.0>
     <table>
       <tr width=1.0 height=0.5>
         <td width=1.0 height=1.0> B </td>
       </tr>
       <tr width=1.0 height=0.5>
         <td width=1.0 height=1.0> F </td>
       </tr>
     </table>
   </td>
   <td width=1.0 height=1.0> C </td>
 </tr>
 <tr width=0.5 height=0.5>
   <td width=1.0 height=1.0> D </td>
   <td width=1.0 height=1.0> E </td>
 </tr>
 </table>

pros & cons ??

• Tk grid style description

 grid -row 0 -column 0 B
 grid -row 0 -column 1 -rowspan 2 C
 grid -row 1 -column 0 F
 grid -row 2 -column 0 D
 grid -row 2 -column 1 E

pros & cons ??

• tree description

 ???
 vtkMRMLSlicerLayoutPaneTreeNode
 {
    split[]
    GetNumberOfChildren()
    GetNthChild (int n)
    DeleteNthChild (int n)
    SetPaneContent ( *vtkObject)
    method to delete a pane (span)
    method to add a split (nest)
 }
 ???

And settled on the tree for its ease of programmatic manipulation.

Ideas on representation and approach:

• nodes represent panes in the layout
• root is the encapsulating pane
• nodes contain weights that describe their horizontal and vertical span of the parent
• only leaf nodes can contain content
• can use swidget infrastructure for handling events using Tk Bind() to avoid triggering unwanted updates in ApplicationGUI during layout manipulation
• Create singleton node on the scene?
• Create a Layout collection on the scene that contains predefined and saved custom layouts?
• Selecting existing layout or creating custom layout would copy a node from the collection into the scene's singleton and triggers an update and redisplay of the Slicer window?

Questions

• If a pane has tabs, how are tabs represented?
• If the main application Window has multiple tabs, then does each tab have its own layout tree?