GUI Layout Toolbox

Layout management objects for MATLAB GUIs

Description

This toolbox provides tools to create sophisticated MATLAB graphical user interfaces that resize gracefully. The classes supplied can be used in combination to produce virtually any user interface layout.

   * Arrange MATLAB user-interface components horizontally, vertically or in grids
   * Ability to mix fixed size and variable size elements
   * Dynamic resizing of elements by dragging dividers
   * Use panels and tabs for switching interface pages

Documentation is included and is integrated into the MATLAB Help Browser. It can also be viewed as a stand-alone web-page.

These layouts are designed to be extensible. A good example of how to do this is Matt Whitaker's ButtonGroups:
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/31902

This toolbox was developed by Ben Tordoff and David Sampson from the Consulting group at MathWorks.

Acknowledgements

This file inspired Overlay Table, 3 D Slicer, Button Group Objects, Flow Cytometry Gui For Matlab, Dynamical System Viewer, and Data Explorer.

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.10 (R2010a)

[Yannick]

Ben,

I actually had to change line 334 of Container.m to "position = [-10000 -10000 100 100];".

It seems 10/10 width/height was crashing the wiggle axes functions by giving <0 size to the axes contained in my box panels.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Yannick. This is easy enough to do. I'll make sure it's in the next update. If you would like to test it before then, email me using the author link above and I'll send you a patch.

[Yannick]

Thanks Ben, I like to remove both borders for a more minimalist look. When I don't need the extra functionality I replace the BoxPanel by a VBox with two elements which allows me to have no borders.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Yannick, thanks for that fix – I'll make sure it's updated in the next version.

There isn't a definitive list of the default properties, I'm afraid. PanelBox will take notice of the default title colour, but that's about all.

Which border was it you wanted to remove, the one around the title, the one around the contents, or both?

[Yannick]

I found a line was missing for the background color of the dock buttons in BoxPanel.m :

Adding the following at line 251 fixes it:

if isfield( obj.HGWidgets_, 'DockButton') set( obj.HGWidgets_.DockButton,'BackgroundColor', value );
end

[Yannick]

Hi, is there a list of the default properties you can set ?

DefaultBoxPanelShadowColor does not seem to work for me ?

Is there also a way to remove the border of the BoxPanel's ?

Cheers,
Yannick

[Adam Filion]

For anyone interested, I was able to solve the problem I described below using the FEX submission ScreenCapture by Yair Altman. For whatever reason, this worked where MATLAB's built-in GETFRAME did not.

[Guo]

 

[Guo]

 

[Anton Semechko]

love this toolbox!!!

[Xha]

To clarify my previous comment I'm looking to use the --

"Use panels and tabs for switching interface pages" with old matlab guis

[Xha]

Anyone know or can help me? I'm wondering if there is a relatively straightforward way to combine the 'pane' functionality of this gui, (using tabs at the top corresponding to each pane), can be combined with the regular matlab GUIDE usage, so I can have multiple panes, in a relatively simple way. I'm looking to retrofit some of my old GUIs without having to recreate them completely using guilayout.

[Dani]

A (long) while ago I commented here and complained that the different uicontrols, more specifically their text, are not vertically aligned. Using Yairs findjobj one can actually align them by directly operating with the underlying java object. Before I forget again how to do it I provide here the updated example:

figure
DUP = get(0, 'DefaultUicontrolPosition');
uicontrol('Style', 'popupmenu', 'String', {'Yes', 'No'}, 'Value', 1, 'Position', DUP);
hu = uicontrol('Style', 'text', 'String', 'Test', 'Position', [5+DUP(1)+DUP(3), DUP(2:4)], 'HorizontalAlignment', 'left');
[a,b] = findjobj(hu);
a.setVerticalAlignment(javax.swing.SwingConstants.CENTER);

[Michael Quinn]

 

[Adam Filion]

Hi Ben,

Many thanks for the awesome toolbox, it's a real time saver and gets rid of a lot of my OCD behavior getting everything to look right.

I have one question for you. I'm creating a GUI for animating higher dimensional data. I'd like to have an option for the user to record the figure during animation to a file like avi or gif. However, the toolbox components don't seem to play nice with MATLAB's GETFRAME. Sometimes what it captures doesn't show updated data, other times components are blacked out, and other times it captures what's behind the GUI. In any case, I never get what I expect.

I haven't run into anything like this with GETFRAME before. Is this a known issue with the toolbox? Do you have any recommendations? Thanks.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Dani, this is related to the legend problems we have already fixed. I have a fix for this too, but it isn't quite ready for release yet. Watch this space...

[Dani]

I have a problem with uiextras.Panel. If I execute the code below then the colorbar is in the wrong position, lying over the axes. This can be cured by uncommenting the pause statement or replacing uiextras.Panel with a conventional uipanel, both not very satisfactory solutions. Am I doing something wrong?

f = figure
p = uiextras.Panel('Parent', f);
c = uicontainer( 'Parent', p );
a = axes('Parent', c);

pcolor(rand(10));
%pause(0.05)
colorbar

[Elliot]

I realized after posting that my last question didn't make any sense, because it related to behavior that I thought was stock Matlab, but actually is not. I have another question, though. I'm trying to layout a plot and a uitable, and make it possible to print to a pdf that looks like the graphics on screen. However, while the on-screen display looks good, the table covers up part of the plot in the pdf. Is there any way to print to a vector pdf so it looks exactly like what I see on screen?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Here's the script I'm using:

X = randn(100,3);
summaryStats = [mean(X); std(X); min(X); median(X); max(X)];

fig = gcf();
set(fig, 'paperunits', 'inches', 'papersize', [11 8.5], 'paperposition', [0 0 11 8.5]);
set(fig, 'units', get(fig, 'paperunits'), 'position', get(fig, 'paperposition'));
set(fig, 'resize', 'off');

vBox = uiextras.VBox('Parent', fig);

p = uicontainer('Parent', vBox);
ax = axes('Parent', p);
plot(ax, X);

tab = uitable('Parent', vBox, 'Data', summaryStats);
ext = get(tab, 'Extent');
set(vBox, 'Sizes', [-1 ext(4)]);

print -painters -dpdf test.pdf

[Elliot]

I've just started using this toolbox, and it looks great. One question: it looks like the standard Matlab rollover functionality (i.e. showing the values on the plot under the mouse) is working for only the last plot added. Is there any way to get it to work for all plots in a figure?

[Evgeny Pr]

@Ben Tordoff
Oh, it's great! Thanks for the useful information!

[Ken Campbell]

Excellent tool. Great documentation. Incredibly fast response from the author.

[Ken Campbell]

 

[Ben Tordoff]

Thanks Sven, I'll get onto that and submit a fix.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Evgeny, my recommendation is to use AppData, not UserData. It is both more flexible and I have found it to be substantially faster. Instead of

set( obj, 'UserData', data )

use

setappdata( obj, 'MyData', data )

Since each piece of app data is named you can have multiple sets of user-stored data in each object. This is a much better system, and works nicely with our uiextras layouts.

[Evgeny Pr]

I think it would be cool to have a 'UserData' field in uiextras classes like all Matlab ui controls to store user data and various context.

[Sven]

Ben, found another ismember hiccup:

Error in uiextras.Container/onChildParentChangedEvent (line 518)
[dummy, loc] = ismember( source, obj.Children_ ); %#ok<ASGLU>

[Evgeny Pr]

@Ben Tordoff

Thanks!

We will have to keep the layout context (index, size, min size) for each hidden child element. :)

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Evgeny, I can see your use-case, but I'm not 100% convinced that setting a widget to be invisible is that same as saying it shouldn't take any space. I have GUIs where I need a widget to appear/disappear without affecting the layout of the rest of the GUI.

I suspect you can achieve what you want by simply setting the size of the element to zero. For example, given an HBox with three children I can make the middle one disappear by doing:

set(box, 'Sizes', [-1 0 -1])

and make it re-appear using:

set(box, 'Sizes', [-1 -1 -1])

No need to fiddle with the visibility - a zero-sized widget is not visible anyway!

[Ben Tordoff]

I've been asked this and similar questions a few times, so I thought I would share my answer with everyone:

"Is it possible to adjust the position of an axis inserted into an HBox or does it have to fill the entire box?"

The answer, as always in computing, is an extra layer of indirection! If you put the axes in a uicontainer or uipanel and put that inside the layout then you have full control of its position within the container whilst still having the overall position managed by the layout. For example:

fig = figure();

box = uiextras.HBox('Parent', fig);

% Create some axes in a container with lots of padding
c1 = uicontainer('Parent', box);
ax1 = axes('Parent', c1, 'OuterPosition', [0.1 0.1 0.8 0.8]);

% Create some axes in a container with no padding
c2 = uicontainer('Parent', box);
ax2 = axes('Parent', c2, 'OuterPosition', [0 0 1 1]);

[Evgeny Pr]

Hello!

Thanks for your job! This helps a lot. Almost as in Qt... :)

But there is one problem.
I want the layout to react automatically to 'Visible' property of the childrens.
If we set 'Visible' to 'off', layout should automatically extend, fill the empty space. That would be great!

See my demo screencast:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/17400742/Video/guilayouts_test.avi

[Graham Fletcher]

Thanks for the feedback Ben, much appreciated.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Graham, a layout panel only shows a single child at a time. When you add the second axes it replaces the first. As with most computing problems, this can be solved with an extra layer of indirection. Simply put your combined axes into their own container and let that manage the position:

f1 = figure('Name', 'Fig1');
p1 = uiextras.Panel('Parent', f1);
c1 = uicontainer('Parent', p1);
ax1 = axes('Parent', c1);
ax2 = axes('Parent', c1, 'YAxisLocation', 'right');

This is the way to handle any custom widget made up from mutliple axes, uicontrols etc. - just put it in its own container.

[Katana13]

Extremely useful toolbox for creating GUIs. I don't know if it's a limitation (Matlab R2012a,GUILayout_v1p12). Example:
h = figure('Menubar','none', 'Toolbar','none','Tag','figure');
hcom = uiextras.HBoxFlex('Parent',h,'Tag','hcom');
str = ' boub boub boub bou de la foucv oeufe fz ozfz efz fvousf zefzf ouvzfz ozfz fouz fz fzo ufzf zouz fozufozf uzo fzoufzo fuziofz fzofiuzfoiz fouzfo ';
hEdit = uicontrol('Parent',hcom, 'Style','edit','Min',0, 'Max',2, 'HorizontalAlignment','left','Units','normalized','String',str,'Tag','hEdit');
com = uicontrol('Style','edit','Parent',hcom,'Max',3,'Min',1,'HorizontalAlignment','left','Units','normalized','Tag','com');
saveas(h,'test','fig');

No problem, if you directly run the script. But if you launch the saved file : 'test.fig', 2 figures pop up (OK if you use "uiextras.HBox" instead of "uiextras.HBoxFlex")

Thanks

[Graham Fletcher]

Very impressed, speeds complex GUI development and results in a much more polished UI.

1 problem I've encountered though - attempting to create something equivalent to a plotyy within a Panel fails, the 1st axes disappear when 2nd axes are created.

f1 = figure('Name', 'Fig1'); p1 = uiextras.Panel('Parent', f1); ax1 = axes('Parent', p1); ax2 = axes('Parent', p1, 'YAxisLocation', 'right');

[Graham Fletcher]

 

[Sven]

Yes, agreed with Dan K. Grids are a little cumbersome to work with. Perhaps as a start a "ByRow" vs "ByCol" option could be helpful.

Dan, one thing that I do is simply add everything by columns, then at the end, grab the children of the grid and re-sort them into the desired order. For example:

C = get(GRID,'Children')
set(GRID,'Children',[C(1:2:end);C(2:2:end)])

[Dan K]

Fabulous tool. There's one piece of functionality that I haven't figured out yet: How can one add items into a parent (such as a Grid) in an order that isn't just stepping down the columns? Is the only way to do it by adding empties? Likewise, how can I replace an entry in a grid/buttonbox/tabpanel once the other items have been added?

Thanks,
Dan

[Ben Tordoff]

I have submitted an update that should fix the legend problems. This should appear here sometime in the next few days, once the upload is approved. When it does, can you check that your problems are fixed?

[Xin Wang]

I found that i can't use legend with this tool.

example:

function bug()
S.f = figure();
tmph1 = uiextras.Panel('Parent',S.f);
S.Axes = axes('Parent',tmph1);
plot(S.Axes,[1,2]);
legend(S.Axes,{'line'});

end

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Sven, thanks for putting in the effort to nail this down so succinctly. I now have a fix for this ready to upload. You should see it appear here in the next few days.

[Ian]

Can confirm Sven's error on OS X + pre-release2013a, no error on 2012b

[Sven]

Oh, and I'm using the latest downloaded version (downloaded last week with a folder name "GUILayout-v1p11"). Note that the "ver" command and the documentation release notes still lists "Version 1.10", but without a date.

[Sven]

Ha, I spent half an hour deconstructing a GUI I had made to try and make a nice file for you... turns out we only need 4 lines to reproduce the error:

f = figure;
axSet = uiextras.HBox('Parent',f);
axH = axes('Parent', axSet);
delete(axH)

The above code will run without error in 2012b (and I assume earlier), but it will produce an error in 2013a pre-release.

It comes down to an ismember call inside the Container.m object deletion function which compares "axes" to "doubles".

I'm not entirely sure if this is a GUI issue or MATLAB issue, so happy debugging!

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Sven, thanks for the heads-up! The release we uploaded in December should have fixed this (we were making an implicit conversion to double that needed to be explicit). If it hasn't fixed it for you can you send an example, as all the examples I have now work with the pre-release.

Thanks.
Ben

[Sven]

Ben, just a heads-up that in 2013a (pre-release) it seems that MATLAB's builtin ismember function is a little more picky about comparing "axes" vs "double" types, and this affects, for example:

line 489 of Container.m

At this point, "source" is of type "axes", while "obj.Children_" is of type "double".

[Ian]

Great tool. I also see a legend bug, and Stefan's fix worked great!

[Alexander]

Unfortunately, the bug with TabPanel and axes is still present. Yes, axes are now always rendered (the effect that resizing or drawnow fixed previously), but, as before, they are not hidden when I switch to another tab. Seems like it depends on the level on which axes are nested. e.g if ancesting is as follows: tab->uipanel->axes, then everything works fine. But if I add one more layer, it breaks, e.g. tab->uipanel->uipanel->axes. (what's interesting, is than borders of uipanels are not rendered when switching to another tab, so they are indeed hidden, while axes are not hidden; they're not even being bound by these borders any more

[Stefan]

Hi Ben, I've found a bug in the handling of legends. In Container.m on line 448:

isa( child, 'axes' )

Must be changed to

isa( eventData.Child, 'axes' )

The cast on line 426 means child will always be a double. This bug causes legends to be draw as separate objects that are disconnected from the axes.

[Heinrich]

Very usefull. Thanks a lot.

If you can answer me the following
Question it would be perfect:

How do I get the parent of an uiextras-Object? get( h , 'Parent' ) just gives me the orinary Matlab-Panel wrapped by it.

regards

[Heinrich]

Very usefull. Thanks a lot.

If you can answer me the following
Question it would be perfect:

How do I get the parent of an uiextras-Object? get( h , 'Parent' ) just gives me the orinary Matlab-Panel wrapped by it.

regards

[Wiliam]

Amazing toolbox, very easy to learn and use. Nice functions to support dynamic layout.

[Nicholas]

I tried to comment on this as I'm having issues, and for some reason my post isn't showing up. I put it on pastebin at: pastebin(dot)com(slash)Hm5K4pL5

[Nicholas]

 

[Wiliam]

Very powerful and easy to use, this should be a part of core MATLAB.

[Nicholas]

 

[Graham]

Any chance of getting it to manage ActiveX controls and make them look like they are part of a specific panel instead of a separate object under the figure? I'd like to be able to put a MSFlexGrid or MSTreeView control on a panel and have it scroll and appear/disappear with the parent TabPanel.

[Robert]

Great code, thanks. I have an issue, apologies if already addressed and I did not find it.

Everything works great, but when I attempt to add items to a chart -- say, using text or patch function -- it adds it to a new figure. These functions don't work with handles, specifically, but even if I activate the figure just before running each of these functions...it still creates a new figure.

It seems like I am missing something fundamentally here, appreciate any thoughts you can provide.

[Tom]

 

[Jesse Hopkins]

Looks like my comment didn't come through on the last rating. This has been a very useful toolbox, but we are having a minor cosmetic issue with VBoxFlex. It seems that about 50% of the time, moving across a flex boundary from right-to-left will cause the pointer to get stuck in the "resize" icon. If I move very slowly across the boundary (right-to-left), then 100% of the time the pointer will get stuck in the "resize" icon, but if I move very quickly across the boundary then it doesn't seem to get stuck in the resize icon. Note that the pointer icon does go back to the normal icon after I leave the layout, or move across the boundary again left-to-right. Any thoughts?

[Jesse Hopkins]

 

[Julien]

 

[Jeff Anderson]

This is probably the best piece of code available on the exchange. It has really changed the way I write GUI's. WOW. THANK YOU!!!

[Sanchali Purandare]

 

[Jingjing Bao]

Thanks, Ben. I didn't know the setappdata/getappdata pair, so I actually wrote one myself as a function, just adding my var to myhandles and attach to the figure handle. It worked fine for me so far :).

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Jingjing, that explains it. The return from FINDOBJ is always a MATLAB graphics primitive. Most of these layouts are built using several primitives. Right now there is no way for me to make them primitives themselves.

One suggestion: instead of using guidata, you might find that using "setappdata"/"getappdata" on the figure is both more flexible and faster. That's what I tend to use.

Ben

[Jingjing Bao]

Ben, Thanks for the reply. I was trying to do this:
hf=figure;
bp = uiextras.BoxPanel('Parent',hf,...
'Tag','boxpanel');
bp.Title = 'Original Title';
hobj=findobj(hf,'Tag','boxpanel');
hobj.Title='New Title';

The objective is to be able to modify the title in a callback. I thought I could use the handle returned by findobj with tag string, but that handle seems not working. I think it due to the fact that the handle returned by findobj is the handle to the container of the composite GUI object, so it's not directly related to the title banner. Now I use guidata to save the actual handle of the boxpanel, then retrieve it inside the callback, and it works fine.
I don't know how difficult it is to modify the layout toolbox source code to make this happen, I will spend sometime look it up after finishing current task.
Thanks again for sharing a great GUI tool.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Jingjing, glad you're finding this useful.

bp = uiextras.BoxPanel();
bp.Title = 'New Title';

is the right way to do it and seems to work fine for me. Could you be a little more specific about what hObj is or post an example? Is hObj definitely the BoxPanel?

[Jingjing Bao]

One of the best!
I have one question related to the BoxPanel, I was trying to modify the 'Title' through hobj.Title='new Title', but it doesn't work. Is there a way to accomplish this? Thanks!

[Jingjing Bao]

 

[Eff]

I believe I have found out how to reproduce the problem. If I use 'painters' (default) as figure renderer the problem does not occur. However, when using opengl rendering the above mentionend problem happens.

To reproduce, execute set(0,'DefaultFigureRenderer','OpenGL') before running my example code (text() makes no difference)

Unfortunately, 'painters' is no option for me as I am doing more advanced 3d rendering.

[Eff]

Hi Ben,
I have messed a bit with drawnow. The simple example I have given is fine by using drawnow. However, if you additionally use the text function in the plot it is not working correctly. Maybe you can reproduce the issue on your system:

mainGrid = uiextras.Grid( 'Parent', figure);
tabPanel = uiextras.TabPanel( 'Parent', mainGrid, 'Padding', 5);

% first tab
firstHBox = uiextras.HBox( 'Parent', tabPanel);
firstVBox = uiextras.VBox('Parent', firstHBox);
uicontrol('style', 'pushbutton', 'String', 'b1', 'parent', firstVBox);
axes('parent', firstVBox);
hold on;
plot(1:100);
text(10,10, 'text of first tab');
drawnow;

set(firstVBox, 'Sizes', [-1 -4]);

% second tab
secondHBox = uiextras.HBox( 'Parent', tabPanel, ...
'Padding', 5);
secondVBox = uiextras.VBox('Parent', secondHBox);
axes('parent', secondVBox);
hold on;
plot(100:-1:1);
text(50,50, 'text of second tab');
drawnow;
uicontrol('style', 'pushbutton', 'String', 'b2', 'parent', secondVBox);

set(secondVBox, 'Sizes', [-4 -1]);

With using drawnow, I don't have any plot in my first tab. When drawnow is used, the effect is the same as in the screenshot above (additionally the text of tab 2 is schon in tab 1).

Thanks a lot!

[Jingjing Bao]

 

[Alain Barraud]

Hi Ben,
I have found a workaround to my first question, putting the small active triangular symbol not exactly on the line separator between the two split panels but topdown and top up on respectively the top panel and bottom panel. The separator handel is not public and I did not modify your class library. Concerning the second point there is a solution within the FEX "Matlab swinging more" by Malcolm. However I am not a Java expert and the Malcom code is difficult to understand. There are some hard issues with this library and I'd like to use your submission which seems very stable.
Thanks again

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Eff, thanks for uploading the picture - I can see the issue. However I still can't reproduce it on R2011b using either Linux or Windows. I have managed to hit another problem which has an easy work-around. You could try this, but it probably won't work. It would be good if we could work out how to reproduce the problem on other systems.

The workaround for this other problem (axes not appearing at all) is to put a "drawnow" after adding each axes. It seems the axes positions are not correct until they have been drawn and this forces an initial draw. An alternative that also works is a resize after drawing, but I doubt this will help your case.

If you could find an example that works on Windows (7) or Mac OS/X (Lion), that would be good as there are far fewer variants of Windows and Mac OS/X than there are of Linux!

Cheers
Ben

[Eff]

An addition: I also had similar issues on my Mac in my previous work.

[Eff]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your reply! I am running Matlab R2011b on Linux. Here is a screenshot of the problem: http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/9826/selection006a.png .

Also, the workarounds I described only work for the mini example. In my real application these workarounds are of no use.

Help is much appreciated!

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Alain, the easiest way to customize any of the layouts is to take a copy of the corresponding class, rename it and then start adding in the bits you want. Hopefully most of the code is commented in the places where it isn't obvious.

I'll have a think about how best to deal with too many tab labels. It would be good to deal with this in a more elegant way in the toolbox. If you manage to come up with something good before I do, please share it!

Cheers
Ben

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Eff,

I've just tried your example and didn't see anything weird happening. Probably that means I'm trying a different platform/version combination than you are. What platform are you running on (Windows, Mac or Linux)? Also, which MATLAB version? If I can reproduce the problem I can probably tell you what's wrong and the most robust way to work-around it (or even fix it).

Ben

[Eff]

Extremely useful toolbox for creating GUIs. However, either I have found a bug or I am using the toolbox incorrectly:

With several tabs having an axes object it occurs that one of the axes objects is always on top, no matter what tab is currently active:

Simplest example I could find to reproduce the problem:

mainGrid = uiextras.Grid( 'Parent', figure);
tabPanel = uiextras.TabPanel( 'Parent', mainGrid, 'Padding', 5);

% first tab
firstHBox = uiextras.HBox( 'Parent', tabPanel);
firstVBox = uiextras.VBox('Parent', firstHBox);
uicontrol('style', 'pushbutton', 'String', 'b1', 'parent', firstVBox);
axes('parent', firstVBox);
hold on;
plot(1:100);

set(firstVBox, 'Sizes', [-1 -4]);

% second tab
secondHBox = uiextras.HBox( 'Parent', tabPanel, ...
'Padding', 5);
secondVBox = uiextras.VBox('Parent', secondHBox);
axes('parent', secondVBox);
hold on;
plot(100:-1:1);
uicontrol('style', 'pushbutton', 'String', 'b2', 'parent', secondVBox);

set(secondVBox, 'Sizes', [-4 -1]);

One workaround is to remove the 'Padding' attribute from tabPanel. Another workaround is to fill a cell of the Grid (which enables additions to the gui easily) with uiextras.empty.

Due to several possible 'solutions' it is not clear for me where the actual problem lies. Can anyone help me out?

[Alain Barraud]

Fantastic,very well written, stable, works perfectly, no problem to use within complex GUI application.
Howewer two questions. How can I add some small trianguler mark on the separation bar (as active button) to set directly the divide value to some max and/or min value.(Full size of one the two splitted panels obtained with uiextras.V(H)BoxFlex).
When uiextra.TabPanel has many panels, there may be not enough room to see all the titles. How to add some facility to sroll right or left in order to access to all title panels?

Lastly, the documentation is one of the best or perhaps the bestI have never seen within FEX submission!!
Thanks a lot!

[Jens]

 

[Brendan]

Hi Ben,

Cracking piece of kit - should definitely become part of core MATLAB.

One issue though, - tabpanels don't appear to support 3D plotting with transparency. I have an application where I need two panels for 3D graphics and two for 2D graphics. I want to use lighting and transparancy in my 3D plots (so render with opengl). I'm having problems doing this.

For example:

f = figure();
p = uiextras.TabPanel( 'Parent', f, 'Padding', 5 );

axes( 'Parent', p );
plot( sin(0:0.1:2*pi) );

axes( 'Parent', p );
surf( peaks )

p.TabNames = {'Sin', 'Peaks'};

doesn't appear to work properly. A portion of the 3D axes are visible in the 2D panel. I can remove this effect by switching the renderer to zbuffer but then I can't use transparency.

I'm guessing that this has something to do with the way that MATLAB is rendering the components - does anyone have any ideas for a workaround?

Cheers,

B

[Maxime Peuch]

None of the solutions you suggest works. But I find a way :
I declare the main_Vbox as a global variable, not a part of a structure. It's implies some adjustments in my code but it will work just fine!

Thank for your quick answer, it led me to a solution.

With respect,
Maxime Peuch.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Max, can you try setting it using "dot" notation:

GUI_data.main_Vbox.Sizes = [...]

A few people in the comments above have noted some odd behaviour when you put layouts inside a struct. It seems that they are then not recognized as proper objects. An alternative is something like:

tmp = GUI_data.main_Vbox;
set(tmp, 'Sizes', [...]);

Let me know if either of these options help.

Ben

[Maxime Peuch]

Hi Ben,
First of all, Great Work! It's exactly what I needed.
I have an issue :

I created a GUI. Using check-boxes, I want to resize the component of an Vbox but I have an error message.

I create the Vbox an put some Hboxes in it.
In the callback function of the check-boxes, I wrote :
set(GUI_data.main_Vbox, 'Sizes', [...]); %GUI_data is the global variable that handles all GUI components.

The error message is :
??? Error using ==> set
There is no 'sizes' property in the 'uipanel' class.

Error in ==> callback_function at 174
set(GUI_data.main_Vbox, 'sizes', sizes);

??? Error while evaluating uicontrol Callback

Apparently, in other functions, a Vbox in see as a uipanel. How can I change the 'Sizes' property from outside the function I create it ?

Thanks, Max.

[Eric Donley]

Please make this part of the Core MATLAB! I have wanted this for so long.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Martyn, where does this warning come from - is it mcc? The toolbox doesn't contain a Tabpanel.p, so presumably this is a file being generated during compilation from TabPanel.m? What release are you using so that I can try and reproduce the same?

If you have a short example that shows this, feel free to email it to me using my author page (click my name next to this post).

Cheers. Ben

[Martyn Dorey]

I get a message when compiling that the Tabpanel.p will not be supported in future versions... is it possible to update this file? Thanks and great piece of work.

[Jarrod Rivituso]

 

[Dani]

Hi again,
this is embarrassing, but I cannot reproduce this. So please just ignore this.
Dani

[Dani]

Hi,

the getpixelposition.p in the patch directory only takes one input argument as opposed to the corresponding Matlab function. Would it be possible to sync these two?

Thanks

Dani

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Dane,

I'm glad this has helped you in your work even with the problems. I have been looking into both the disappearing axes problem and ways to speed-up initialization, but right now don't have any good solutions that don't also break something else. Hopefully I will find a way to improve these soon, and will be able to post an update.

Ben

[Dane]

Ben,
Thank you for this excellent tool. I've used it to develop MATLAB applications for a laser laboratory - interfacing and acquiring data from hardware, as well as data processing and visualization. Your toolkit has made things much more organized and has also influenced my decision to use MATLAB as a platform.

Some feedback:
I have experienced the disappearing axes problem mentioned by Brett and M Koelemay. I have tested both their code snippets in R2011b and reproduced the behavior they report. I haven't investigated Brett's HBox position solution because my axes are buried several levels deep and don't know which Container to play with. M Koelemay's resizing suggestion works every time however.

Regarding performance, for complex applications the startup time is becoming a slight nuisance. This could be related to Holger's suggestion of removing obj.redraw statements. Perhaps a command which globally requests a deferral of redraws, until a partner command is called again? This could be placed in constructor/GUI initialization code.

[M Koelemay]

Fantastic toolbox, by the way

[M Koelemay]

I also am having issues with "disappearing axes" on tab/cards. Sometimes the axes appear "half drawn" or sized incorrectly, and sometimes missing completely. Stepping through the following code will illustrate the issue (tested in R2010b and R2011a). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

f = figure;
cp = uiextras.CardPanel('Parent',f);
p1 = uiextras.Panel('Parent',cp);
p2 = uiextras.Panel('Parent',cp);

g = uiextras.Grid('Parent',p1);
ax = axes('Parent',g);
plot(ax,randn(10,1));
ax = axes('Parent',g);
plot(ax,randn(10,1));

g = uiextras.Grid('Parent',p2);
ax = axes('Parent',g);
plot(ax,randn(30,1));

% card 2 showing with 1 axes, all good

cp.SelectedChild = 1;

% card 1 showing blank, but should have 2 axes

% resizing the figure slightly makes axes appear!
set(f,'position',.99*get(f,'position'));

% going back to card 2, appears blank
cp.SelectedChild = 2;

% resizing the figure slightly makes axes appear!
set(f,'position',.99*get(f,'position'));

[Benjamin]

 

[jvc]

Absolutely terrific! Thanks to the authors for this incredibly useful tool.

I have encountered one problem - I find that figures which contain the GridFlex object cannot be saved to disk without hanging Matlab. If I simply replace GridFlex with Grid then all is well. When a figure with GridFlex is saved the file is actually written to disk but Matlab has to be manually killed. When the saved figure is subsequently reloaded it generates a slew of errors like this:

??? Attempt to reference field of
non-structure array.

Error in ==>
MousePointerHandler>@(varargin)obj.onMouseMoved(varargin{:})
at 42
set(fig,'WindowButtonMotionFcn',
@obj.onMouseMoved);

[Sim]

Great tool.

There is a problem with the BoxPanel. The widgets do not get the correct color when I set it to a different color than the default blueish one (in fact the widget color is hardcoded as 'titleColor' at line 71).

[Eva]

Great Submission, the GUIs have a nice look.
I've experienced the same problem as Brett with "vanishing axes" but ao far didn't have any succes with his solution.
Any other ideas why this problem might occur?
Eva

[Brett Gyarfas]

Hi Ben,
Thanks for the reply, I think I found my problem though. It had to do with having an axes which was a child of an HBox that was embedded in a bunch of VBox & HBox's and setting the selectedChild to a tab where the axes wasn't. I was able to fix it by making sure the VBox & HBox's units were set to normalized and the position set to [0 0 1 1].

Here is an example though to illustrate. The first time you run it you'll notice that 'Page 2' appears empty. If you run it again with the last line commented out then it appears to work fine. If you run it one last time with the last line uncommented and the first HBox with the units as normalized and position [0 0 1 1] (uncomment line 7, comment line 8) then you can start on the first Page and still have Page 2 work properly.

%Example of 'disappearing' axes
newFig = figure('Toolbar', 'None', 'MenuBar', 'None', 'Position', [0 0 200 350]);

g = uiextras.TabPanel('Parent', newFig);

uicontrol('Parent', g, 'Background','r')

% z = uiextras.HBox('Parent', g,'Units', 'normalized', 'Position', [0 0 1 1]);
z = uiextras.HBox('Parent', g);

uiextras.Empty('Parent', z);

y = uiextras.VBox('Parent', z);

uiextras.Empty('Parent', y);

zxcv = axes('Parent', y,...
'ActivePositionProperty', 'Position', ...
'GridLineStyle', 'none', 'TickLength',...
[0 0],'XLim',[0 11], 'YLim', [0 11]);

tData = uint8(round(rand(10,10,3).*255));

image('Parent', zxcv, 'CData', tData);

uiextras.Empty('Parent', y);

set(y, 'Sizes', [-1 20 -1]);

uiextras.Empty('Parent', z);

set(z, 'Sizes', [-1 20 -1]);

g.SelectedChild = 1;

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Brett, could you share a short example to demonstrate this? Glad you're finding it useful and educational.

Thanks
Ben

[Brett Gyarfas]

Awesome Toolbox! I've enjoyed looking through the code to help me in my own OOP work in MATLAB.
I found a bug with using Axes and the TabPanel. If you have an Axes on a tab and you switch to another that has a 'spacing' where the axes is in the other tab then you can see the axes. I don't know if this is related to the clipping bug w/ UIPANELS or not but I thought I would put it out there.

Thanks Again!
Brett

[Etienne]

That works great, thanks Ben.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Etienne,
we've had a few requests to make the properties of the layouts observable, which would have helped - I will look into this. However you can do this in a neater way as follows:

<code>
% Build a simple GUI
h = uiextras.HBoxFlex('Spacing',10);
button = uicontrol( 'String', 'button', 'Parent', h );
table = uitable( 'Parent', h );
% Now listen out for movements
addlistener( button, 'Position', 'PostSet', @(a,b) disp('button moved') );
addlistener( table, 'Position', 'PostSet', @(a,b) disp('table moved') );
</code>

Hopefully you can just slot your desired callback into the final argument to "addlistener" and you're done. This also has the advantage of not being anything to do with the layouts - it'll work no matter how you design your GUI.

Let me know if that works for you.
Ben

[Etienne]

Hi Ben

I have a uitable placed in an HBox object, and would like the table to resize with the divider. I was hoping to do this with a callback from the HBox component. How would I go about implementing this type of functionality?

Regards

Etienne

P.S. Great toolbox by the way.

[Etienne Coetzee]

Great submission. Makes the look and feel a lot better than previously. Thanks.

[Joseph Burgel]

Ben,

Regarding July 1 post, I created a public property called "Locked" and wrapped the tab callback in TabPanel:

function iTabClicked( src, evt, obj, idx ) %#ok<INUSL>

if ~obj.Locked
% Call the user callback before selecting the tab
evt = struct( ...
'Source', obj, ...
'PreviousChild', obj.SelectedChild, ...
'SelectedChild', idx );
uiextras.callCallback( obj.Callback, obj, evt );
obj.SelectedChild = idx;
end

end % iTabClicked

Setting Locked to true will allow the user to do things on the active tab but will not allow the tab to change. I tried to subclass TabPanel and overload 'onChildAdded' and 'iTabClicked' to do this but couldn't get this to work because of these private properties:

properties( SetAccess = private, GetAccess = private, Hidden = true )
Images_ = struct()
TabImage_ = []
PageLabels = []
end % private propertie

Next rev, can you add the Locked feature or set these properties to 'protected'

Great package. Thanks.

[Joseph Burgel]

Hi Ben,

I've got a tab panel where I'd like to implement a 'edit' mode on one of the tabs. The user should NOT be able to change the active tab until she comes out of 'edit' mode. So, during 'edit mode' the tab control should be disabled. The problem is, Enable property on the tab disables the tab kids as well so the user cannot do anything to child controls of the tab while in 'edit' mode. I'm not allowed to subsequently change Enable on kids either. I see in your code where to change this. Should I just subclass the TabPanel and implement what I describe. Your comments? Suggestions?

[Henry Harrison]

Hi- thanks for a great toolbox!

I had a quick question. Is there any way to get a ButtonBox to behave like a uibuttongroup? Basically to enforce 1 button selected at a time, and a selectionchange callback. Should not be hard to implement manually but a bit over my head I'm afraid.

[Nicolas]

got it:
delete(get(layout, 'Children'));

[Nicolas]

it's ok, i'll rearange to use an entire column :/ thank you for trying!

could you help me to destroy/delete a layout and replace it by another one?
or even better:
how to clear the content of a layout to refill it.

thx

[Ben Tordoff]

I've tried a few things and asked a few people and it looks like getting the clipping right isn't currently possible. If you just need buttons and other similar widgets to be scrollable it might be possible to do it all using a Java scroll-panel embedded in the MATLAB figure. You can't put MATLAB widgets inside one of those though. I can't think of any other good options, sorry.

[Nicolas]

Jason Kinchen has done a very nice ScrollPanel class.
However it also laks the ability to clip "heavyweight object" (buttons, tables, ect.)

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/29776-scrollpanel

[Nicolas]

Ey Ben

I was just about to formulate occuring problems with clipping.
Obviously you've already understood ;)

"...using some combination of parenting and clipping settings."
If you could give me some more hints I'll try to make it work and keep you updated...

thx

ps: the idea of posting my own fileexchange hasn't occured to me jet. since you think it could be worthwhile i do consider...

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Nicolas, this is nice. Thanks for posting it for everyone to share. You might consider submitting it as a separate File Exchange submission and posting a link here. That way you can update the code without having to keep reposting it.

However, there are some clipping issues. If you don't have the main panel filling the window (e.g. position [0.1 0.1 0.8 0.8]) then the contents of the scroll panel show outside the panel boundary. This doesn't matter if the panel fills the figure. It might be possible to fix this using some combination of parenting and clipping settings. I haven't had chance to try these yet but will let you know.

Thanks. Ben

[Nicolas]

addlistener(... ;)

[Nicolas]

sorry 4 the previous post, there have been some buggs...
this version also has mousewheel functionality:
(this might not bee the apropriate forum to post this but i belive it might help Ben to improve this great toolbox)
********************************
function test
%

mainpanelheight = 400;
mainpanelwidth = 400;
scrollbarwidth = 20;

f = figure('Position', [50 50 mainpanelwidth mainpanelheight], ...
'ResizeFcn', @slider);

mainpanel = uiextras.HBox('Parent', f, ...
'Units', 'normalized', ...
'Position', [0 0 1 1]);

controlpanel = uiextras.VBox('Parent', mainpanel);
scrollpanel = uiextras.VBox('Parent', mainpanel);

uicontrol('Parent', controlpanel, 'Background', 'r')
uicontrol('Parent', controlpanel, 'Background', 'b')
uicontrol('Parent', controlpanel, 'Background', 'g')

set(controlpanel, 'Sizes', [400, 1000, 200]);
controlpanelheight = sum(get(controlpanel, 'Sizes'))
controlpanelpos = [1 (mainpanelheight-controlpanelheight) mainpanelwidth-scrollbarwidth controlpanelheight];
set(controlpanel, 'Position', controlpanelpos);

set(mainpanel, 'Sizes', [-1 scrollbarwidth]);

pause(0.1);

scrollbar = uicontrol('Style', 'slider', ...
'Parent', scrollpanel, ...
'String', 'drueck', ...
'Callback', @slider);
addlistener(scrollbar, 'Value', 'PostSet', @slider);
set(f, 'WindowScrollWheelFcn', @scroll);

set(scrollbar, 'Value', 1);

slider;

function slider(~, ~)
pause(0.05);

set(mainpanel, 'Units', 'pixel');

mainpanelpos = get(mainpanel, 'Position');
mainpanelwidth = mainpanelpos(3);
mainpanelheight = mainpanelpos(4);
controlpanelpos(2)=(mainpanelheight-controlpanelheight);
controlpanelpos(3)=(mainpanelwidth-scrollbarwidth);

if(mainpanelheight>controlpanelheight)
set(scrollbar, 'Value', 1, 'Enable', 'off');
else
set(scrollbar, 'Enable', 'on');
end %if

slidervalue = get(scrollbar, 'Value');

set(controlpanel, 'Position', [controlpanelpos(1) controlpanelpos(2)+(mainpanelheight-controlpanelheight)*(slidervalue-1) controlpanelpos(3) controlpanelpos(4)])

set(mainpanel, 'Units', 'normalized');

set(scrollbar, 'SliderStep',[mainpanelheight/controlpanelheight/5 mainpanelheight/controlpanelheight])
end

function scroll(object, event)
scrollbarstep = get(scrollbar, 'SliderStep');
newscrollbarvalue = get(scrollbar, 'Value')-event.VerticalScrollCount*scrollbarstep(1);
if(newscrollbarvalue>1)
newscrollbarvalue = 1;
elseif(newscrollbarvalue<0)
newscrollbarvalue = 0;
end %if
set(scrollbar, 'Value', newscrollbarvalue);

end

end
********************************

[Nicolas]

Hy Ben!
Thank you for the feedback.
I've managed to get it to work for my purposes. Here the example (sorry it's undocumented):
********************************
function test
%

mainpanelheight = 400;
mainpanelwidth = 400;
scrollbarwidth = 20;

f = figure('Position', [50 50 mainpanelwidth mainpanelheight], ...
'ResizeFcn', @slider);

mainpanel = uiextras.HBox('Parent', f, ...
'Units', 'normalized', ...
'Position', [0 0 1 1]);

controlpanel = uiextras.VBox('Parent', mainpanel);
scrollpanel = uiextras.VBox('Parent', mainpanel);

uicontrol('Parent', controlpanel, 'Background', 'r')
uicontrol('Parent', controlpanel, 'Background', 'b')
uicontrol('Parent', controlpanel, 'Background', 'g')

set(controlpanel, 'Sizes', [400, 400, 20]);
controlpanelheight = sum(get(controlpanel, 'Position'));
controlpanelpos = [1 (mainpanelheight-controlpanelheight) mainpanelwidth-scrollbarwidth controlpanelheight];
set(controlpanel, 'Position', controlpanelpos);

set(mainpanel, 'Sizes', [-1 scrollbarwidth]);

pause(0.01);

scrollbar = uicontrol('Style', 'slider', ...
'Parent', scrollpanel, ...
'String', 'drueck', ...
'Callback', @slider);
set(scrollbar, 'Value', 1);

slider;

function slider(~, ~)
pause(0.01);
slidervalue = get(scrollbar, 'Value')

set(mainpanel, 'Units', 'pixel');

mainpanelpos = get(mainpanel, 'Position');
mainpanelwidth = mainpanelpos(3)
mainpanelheight = mainpanelpos(4)
controlpanelpos(2)=(mainpanelheight-controlpanelheight);
controlpanelpos(3)=(mainpanelwidth-scrollbarwidth);

set(controlpanel, 'Position', [controlpanelpos(1) controlpanelpos(2)+(mainpanelheight-controlpanelheight)*(slidervalue-1) controlpanelpos(3) controlpanelpos(4)])

set(mainpanel, 'Units', 'normalized');
end

end
*************************
Hopefully this can help others...
Greetings!

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Nicolas, your top-level layout defaults to being the same size as its parent figure (400x400) and you haven't told it do grow. It has to fit its contents into that space and no matter how big you tell the contents to be, unless you also tell the layout to grow they will be reduced to fit. Simply put "set( layout, 'Position', [1 1 400 820] )" and the layout grows, along with its contents.

I do not know of any simple way to add scroll-bars to a panel. You might be able to hack something together using sliders but I suspect you will hit problems with clipping. I'll do a bit of investigating though.

Cheers. Ben

[Nicolas]

quote Adam:
Wonderful package. But I would like to ask if there is any possibility to add scroll bars to your panels, and if so, how could I do that. Thank you very much, Adam
end quote

I also would like to know how to make this work.
Here an example:

f = figure('Position', [50 50 400 400])
layout = uiextras.VBox('Parent', f);
uicontrol( 'Parent', layout, 'Background', 'r' )
uicontrol( 'Parent', layout, 'Background', 'b' )
uicontrol( 'Parent', layout, 'Background', 'g' )
set(layout, 'Sizes', [400, 400, 20]);

The window size is 400 and i want to add 3 items with a total size greater 400.
Instead of using a scrollbar the items are scaled to fit into the window.
If this behaviour were requested one could use negative numbers.

Thank you for you consideration and this (otherwise) fabulous toolbox.
I look forward to reading from you...

[Thomas]

Fantastic!

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Thomas. Your example produces an error message because "units" should have a capital "U" and position a capital "P". Fix this and it works fine as far as I can see.

Cheers. Ben

[Thomas]

I'm afraid that I don't see any scaling behavior in the included examples - even with the changes suggested on 06 may. I just get a grey figure. (with MatLab 2011a)

Here's the code:

f = figure( 'Position', 200*ones(1,4) );
vbox = uiextras.VBox( 'Parent', f, 'units','normalized', 'position', [0 0 1 1] );
axes( 'Parent', vbox );
hbox = uiextras.HButtonBox( 'Parent', vbox, 'Padding', 5 );
uicontrol( 'Parent', hbox, ...
'String', 'Button 1' );
uicontrol( 'Parent', hbox, ...
'String', 'Button 2' );
set( vbox, 'Sizes', [-1 35] )

[Andreas]

 

[Simon]

Great! Thanks, Ben!

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Simon, you need to set the units of "vbox" to be normalized and the position to be [0 0 1 1]. This is exactly as you would do for any other MATLAB GUI element if you wanted it to scale with the figure. I hope to make this the default again in future - it used to be but it caused a bug with the way panels were drawn.

[Simon]

Hm. Maybe I'm missing something but I copied this code from the docs:

f = figure( 'Position', 200*ones(1,4) );
vbox = uiextras.VBox( 'Parent', f );
axes( 'Parent', vbox );
hbox = uiextras.HButtonBox( 'Parent', vbox, 'Padding', 5 );
uicontrol( 'Parent', hbox, ...
'String', 'Button 1' );
uicontrol( 'Parent', hbox, ...
'String', 'Button 2' );
set( vbox, 'Sizes', [-1 35] )

And it doesn't scale at all.

I'm completely new to MATLAB GUIs so I apologize if this is a stupid question.

[Adam]

Wonderful package. But I would like to ask if there is any possibility to add scroll bars to your panels, and if so, how could I do that. Thank you very much, Adam

[Ken]

Thanks for the quick response Ben. This issue is covered by Bug#260354, so I added feedback on that bug.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Ken,
This is a problem with UIPANELs in general, not just the ones used by the Layouts to group their contents. You can easily reproduce the problem with a single UIPANEL:

f=figure;
p=uipanel('Parent',f);
a=axes('Parent',p);
title('Axes in a panel');
axis(a,[-1 1 -1 1]);
rectangle('Parent',a,'Position',[-2 -0.5 4 1],'FaceColor','r');
patch([0.5 0.5 0.75 0.75],[-2 2 2 -2],'y','Parent',a);
line([-2 2],[-0.5 0.5],'Parent',a);

I would strongly urge you to report this bug here: http://www.mathworks.com/support/bugreports

In some cases you may be able to work around it by switching the figure renderer to be OpenGL or ZBuffer, but each has its own quirks. For your example these other renderers draw the line and patch with different depth ordering, so they may just make things worse. However, I'm not sure what else to suggest.

Sorry about that.
Ben

[Adam Wyatt]

Excellent work!

[Ken]

Just in case it got lost among the comments above, I want to re-post a bug I encountered with clipping...

Putting an axes object inside a layout box appears to break clipping for rectangles and patches plotted in those axes (but strangely not for lines).

Here's a code snippet that demonstrates the issue...

f=figure;
a=axes('Parent',f);
title('Without GUI Layout Toolbox');
axis(a,[-1 1 -1 1]);
rectangle('Parent',a,'Position',[-2 -0.5 4 1],'FaceColor','r');
patch([0.5 0.5 0.75 0.75],[-2 2 2 -2],'y','Parent',a);
line([-2 2],[-0.5 0.5],'Parent',a);

f=figure;
hbox=uiextras.HBox('Parent',f);
a=axes('Parent',hbox);
title('With GUI Layout Toolbox');
axis(a,[-1 1 -1 1]);
rectangle('Parent',a,'Position',[-2 -0.5 4 1],'FaceColor','r');
patch([0.5 0.5 0.75 0.75],[-2 2 2 -2],'y','Parent',a);
line([-2 2],[-0.5 0.5],'Parent',a);

Ken

[Julian Villegas]

Thank you very much for this useful and well documented Toolbox.

I'm running into a problem and I was hoping someone with more experience in this could help me:

My application uses a FlexGrid with three axes, and one of the axes (the one in the bottom) comprises several jcontrol objects. Everything works fine, and looks good, excepting when a user resize the axis containing the jcontrol objects or the axis immediately on top. The jcontrol are not repositioned where they should be. How can I call a function when the axis is being resized?
Thank you.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Johnson,
thanks for reporting this - it will be fixed in the next version. In the meantime, replace "figh" with "obj.Parent" at the point the error was hit and this should fix things.

Cheers. Ben

[Johnson Gad Elkarim]

There is an error
??? Error while evaluating figure WindowButtonMotionFcn

??? Undefined function or variable 'figh'.

Error in ==> MousePointerHandler>MousePointerHandler.onMouseMoved at 79
currpos = hgconvertunits( figh, [currpos,0,0], figUnits,
'pixels', 0 );

Error in ==> MousePointerHandler>@(varargin)obj.onMouseMoved(varargin{:}) at
42
set(fig,'WindowButtonMotionFcn', @obj.onMouseMoved);

??? Error while evaluating figure WindowButtonMotionFcn

[Emil]

Thank you for your quick reply Ben! Your suggestion did the trick. The 'TabSize' property was what I was looking for.

Don't be sorry for not including this in the documentation. I'm very grateful that this toolbox is available in the first place. Everything else is just icing on the cake :)

Thanks again!

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Emil, I believe what you want is something like:

t = uiextras.TabPanel( 'FontSize', 16, 'TabSize', 150, 'Units', 'Normalized', 'Position', [0 0 1 1] );
uicontrol( 'Parent', t );
uicontrol( 'Parent', t );

The 'TabSize' property lets you control the size of the tabs. Let me know if this doesn't fix your problem. For some reason this property was missing in the documentation - sorry about that.

Ben

[Ben Tordoff]

Thanks Jesse, I'm glad you're finding it useful. Please feel free to add any suggestions for improvements or fixes to this forum - I do keep track of them even if I can't implement them all.

Cheers. Ben

[Jesse Hopkins]

Thanks so much for this awesome submission. It's been a lifesaver and made me look really impressive :)

But my problem is.. JK, thought I'd just leave a thank you without a problem statement!

[Emil]

First of all I would like to express my gratitude for all your hard work. This is a very useful tool which saves a lot of time!

I have a problem with TabPanel. The width of each tab is fixed and doesn't stretch with the TabNames. If I have longer TabNames than 5 characters in the default FontSize the rest is cut of. Is t suppose to be like this or am I doing something wrong? I also haven't found any property which sets the width of each (or all) tab.

Best regards
Emil

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Patrick. Yes, this is a known problem. The older version used to default to units being "normalized" and position [0 0 1 1], which makes it fill the window. Unfortunately this caused a bug with panels where extra space was left at the top. I had to change them back to defaulting to pixel units which means they no longer automatically resize with the window. I hope to restore the default to being "normalized" once I've found a way to do it without breaking the panels.

In the meantime, simply set your top-most layout to have pixel units and position [0 0 1 1]. It will then always fill the figure. So long as it isn't a panel you shouldn't suffer any ill effects.

Hope that helps. Ben.

[Patrick]

Hi, great toolbox! It sould really be a part of the MATLAB stanard distrubtion.

Now to my problem: I have two vboxes that are children an hbox which is a child my main figure. With the older version, the hbox and the two vboxes would resize with the windo, but with the new version, released in March, they won't resize. Do you know why this would happen? Thanks.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Joseph. As regards hiding a child, the best thing to do is not to reparent it as that can make it hard to put back in the right place (for instance if you want to hide the middle of three children of an HBox then put it back in the middle). For many cases, simply hiding it is enough:

f = figure();
h = uiextras.HBox( 'Parent', f, 'Units', 'Normalized', 'Position', [0 0 1 1] );
controls = [
uicontrol( 'Parent', h, 'String', 'Button 1' )
uicontrol( 'Parent', h, 'String', 'Button 2' )
uicontrol( 'Parent', h, 'String', 'Button 3' )
];
pause(1)

set( controls(2), 'Visible', 'off' );
set( h, 'Sizes', [-1 0 -1] );
pause(1)

set( controls(2), 'Visible', 'on' );
set( h, 'Sizes', [-1 -1 -1] );

Note however that if "Spacing" is not zero you end up with some extra space between the remaining elements. I've tried the re-parenting away technique too and the following seems to work OK:

f = figure();
h = uiextras.HBox( 'Parent', f, 'Units', 'Normalized', 'Position', [0 0 1 1] );
null = uiextras.HBox( 'Parent', f, 'Position', [-1000 -1000 10 10] );
controls = {
uicontrol( 'Parent', h, 'String', 'Button 1' )
uicontrol( 'Parent', h, 'String', 'Button 2' )
uicontrol( 'Parent', h, 'String', 'Button 3' )
};
pause(1)

set( controls{2}, 'Parent', double(null) );
pause(1)

set( controls{2}, 'Parent', double(h) );

[Marian Hertrich]

Hi Ben,

thanks for your reply. Meanwhile we fixed the problem by putting the parent-handle in brackets
gui.box2=uiextras.VBox('Parent', gui.box1); % here it works without problem
gui.edit1=uicontrol(...
'Style', 'Edit',
'Parent', gui.('box2'));

Anyway this problem occured only in a few of our GUI's, for others the conventional call went without errors. Maybe our workaround helps to locate and fix the problem.

[Joseph Burgel]

Here's some code that show's a (at least one) problem:

classdef TestIt < hgsetget
properties
ShiftPanel
end

methods

function Test1(Obj)

f = figure( 'Position', 200*ones(1,4) );
vbox = uiextras.VBox( 'Parent', f );
axes( 'Parent', vbox );
hbox = uiextras.HButtonBox( 'Parent', vbox, 'Padding', 5 );
uicontrol( 'Parent', hbox, ...
'String', 'Button 1' );
uicontrol( 'Parent', hbox, ...
'String', 'Button 2' );

end

function Test2(Obj)

f = figure( 'Position', 200*ones(1,4) );
vbox = uiextras.VBox( 'Parent', f );
axes( 'Parent', vbox );
Obj.ShiftPanel = uiextras.HButtonBox( 'Parent', vbox, 'Padding', 5 );
uicontrol( 'Parent', Obj.ShiftPanel, ...
'String', 'Button 1' );
uicontrol( 'Parent', Obj.ShiftPanel, ...
'String', 'Button 2' );
end



end

end

Test1 works but Test2 doesn't. Why can I not instantiate a member property but I can instantiate to a local variable??

[Joseph Burgel]

Further investigation reveals the tab container is not rendering correctly because one of the child uiextra containers contains a uicontrol object. remove the uicontrol and the problem disappears....

[Joseph Burgel]

Just to echo the parenting concerns. I'm not having a lot of luck moving containers from one parent to another. Using double() isn't helping. uiextras parents or classic Matlab parents do not seem to matter. Sometimes I get indexing errors from within the uiextra code where the number of kids are not correct. Now, I'm getting problems with a Tab view not rendering out correctly because child containers were re-parented.

[Joseph Burgel]

What do you all do if you need to remove a container from a parent temporarily? Say, due to state, I only want 2 kids not three. Where do I put third kid. My solution was to give the figure a invisible "Null" container and parent the orphaned container to null when I don't need it. When I tried to use Uiextras.panel as "Null" I got several errors in the uiextras code. When I made the null container's type uipanel, it worked. Not sure why uiextras.panel didn't work? Good method or keeping orphaned containers?

[Sebastian Held]

Hi Ben,
thanks for the quick reply. Ok a read about that before, but didn't realize it's the same issue. Sorry for the noise.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Sebastian, Marian,

this has come up a few times now in slightly different ways, and whilst I still don't know the cause, the remedy is to call double(layout) to explicitly convert the layout to a double handle:

set(u,'Parent',double(layout)); %reparent

It shouldn't be necessary, and wasn't in older MATLAB releases. It is being investigated...

[Sebastian Held]

I've a problem reparenting objects drawn inside GUIDE to a layout:
f=figure;
u=uicontrol(f,'Style','Frame');
layout = uiextras.GridFlex( 'Parent', f );
set(u,'Parent',layout); %reparent
??? Error using ==> set
Parameter must be 'hgsetget'.
isa(layout,'hgsetget')
ans = 1

Why does Matlab 2010b not recognize layout as a 'hgsetget'?

[Marian Hertrich]

Hi Ben, thanks for this excellent tool. We have developed a relatively large project using the Gui Layout Tool v1p8.
I just tested it on 2010b and get the error explained by William Weideman on Sept, 15th: Conversion to double from unknown is not possible.
In Container.m there is a function that should actually cast the handle in the structure (function container = double( obj )) but I still get the same error. Applying your workaround would require a lot of work. Is there a better solution in sight?

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Dani, Dirk, sorry for the lack of response. I will look into these issues as soon as I can take some time out. Bear with me!

[Dani]

I think I have a similar problem as Andrew Stamps. When I switched to 1.8 all my layouts all of a sudden had additional spaces. This can be reproduced with the following code:

f = figure();
h_p = uiextras.Panel( 'Parent', f, 'Title', 'Test', 'Padding', 0);
h_vbox = uiextras.VBox('Parent', h_p, 'Padding', 0, 'Spacing',0);
uicontrol('Parent', h_vbox, 'Style', 'text', 'String', 'Test', 'HorizontalAlignment', 'Left');

There is a large gap between the uicontrol and the top panel border. Previous to 1.8 this was not the case and I have no idea how to control this.

[Dirk Engel]

Thank you Ben and David for this contribution. The flexible boxes finally provide a way of real interactive GUI scalability. Found nothing comparable.

Unfortunately, still some bugs and missing features (in v1.8) for large GUI applicatons. E.g.
* for containers with 2 or more dividers, sliding one divider behind another one throws "Width and height must be > 0" in Container>Container.repositionChild at 340
* dividers often overlap borders of adjacent panels, looks very unprofessional (perhaps a rounding problem of pixel positions?)
* poor redrawing in case of many nested flexible boxes (one has to watch the controls getting resized back and forth several times until the final result)
* user-defined WindowButtonUpFcn is getting lost when a divider is moved while any figure mode is on (e.g. zoom). When turning off the mode, the WindowButtonUpFcn of the devider is restored instead of the user-defined callback function.
* nice to have: height and width limits and maybe other constraints for flexible containers. Perhaps one can adopt some ideas from another nice layout manager: GridBagLayout. Thanks to OOP I'm of course free to do this by subclassing, but maybe the feature finds its way into the uiextras toolbox.

[Joseph Burgel]

I'm getting the same bug Holger mentions above:

Try moving the vertical gridflex divider in your example "gridflexpositioning". Only the horizontal dividers are functional.

[andres llopis]

Hello again. I am using the version 1.6 of the tool. Is it possible to hide a tab in a tabpanel? I don't want to delete it, just hide it.

And another one: is it possible that when you hide a button in a Vbox whose sizes are fixed pixel values (with no negative values), it resizes automatically? For example, the button underneath could move up to fill the space the one you hid left behind.

Thanks a lot guys =)

[Joseph Burgel]

Good Idea. Thanks Dave.

[David Sampson]

In response to the question about custom resize behavior, subclass our relevant class and implement your own resize method.

[Joseph Burgel]

I'm looking at issues where, for instance, I want to maintain the aspect ratio of flex box kids. So, I'd like to know when a flex box resizes - ideally just before and just after a resize. Then, based on this, I might change the sizes property of sub containers, resize panels etc. I don't see callbacks for these events or preset postset, setobservable property attributes set to allow this on the ideal properties. Things like flex resize, I'm currently using child uipanel resize handlers to do this but this seems sloppy. Anybody have a 'best practice' approach to handling resize events in the toolbox?

[andres llopis]

Hello there!

I am having a problem with the stacking of components. I want to be able to move one of the children of a vbox behind the other one, in order to scroll through the interface. The problem is that the moving children is always on top. I have tried using uistack, but it doesn't work either.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

[Ken]

Thanks for this great toolbox Ben and David, I've found it very useful.

I think I've discovered a bug. Putting an axes object inside a layout box appears to break clipping for rectangles and patches plotted in those axes (but strangely not for lines).

Here's a code snippet that demonstrates the issue...

f=figure;
a=axes('Parent',f);
title('Without GUI Layout Toolbox');
axis(a,[-1 1 -1 1]);
rectangle('Parent',a,'Position',[-2 -0.5 4 1],'FaceColor','r');
patch([0.5 0.5 0.75 0.75],[-2 2 2 -2],'y','Parent',a);
line([-2 2],[-0.5 0.5],'Parent',a);

f=figure;
hbox=uiextras.HBox('Parent',f);
a=axes('Parent',hbox);
title('With GUI Layout Toolbox');
axis(a,[-1 1 -1 1]);
rectangle('Parent',a,'Position',[-2 -0.5 4 1],'FaceColor','r');
patch([0.5 0.5 0.75 0.75],[-2 2 2 -2],'y','Parent',a);
line([-2 2],[-0.5 0.5],'Parent',a);

Ken

[Sven]

Ben, it's fantastic to see you responding to comments/requests. I also encountered the axes creation from a uiextras.Panel bug as above and created a bug request. You can reproduce the error with the following function:

function testgui( )
figH = figure;
s.normalPanH = uipanel('Parent',figH);
s.uiextraPanH = uiextras.Panel('Parent',figH);
tmp = s.uiextraPanH;
axH1 = axes( 'Parent', tmp ); % This command runs
axH2 = axes( 'Parent', s.normalPanH ); % This command runs
axH3 = axes( 'Parent', s.uiextraPanH ); % This command errors
end

Interestingly enough, those same commands pasted into the command window don't throw an error - it only occurs when embedded inside a function.

I have created bug report: 1-DX1A26

[Andrew Stamps]

Ben,

This is essentially the same example as I posted above, but I believe it demonstrates my point:

f1 = figure;
p1 = uiextras.Panel('Parent', f1, 'Title', 'Panel 1');
p2 = uiextras.Panel('Parent', p1, 'Title', 'Panel 2');

f2 = figure;
p3 = uiextras.Panel('Parent', f2, 'Title', 'Panel 3');
p4 = uiextras.Panel('Parent', p3, 'Title', 'Panel 4', 'Units', 'Pixels');

Figure 1 has additional space at the top and right in between panel 1 and panel 2 compared to panels 3 and 4 in figure 2. I just reinstalled v1.8 and removed all other versions from my path as a precaution. I am using R2010B.

We don't appear to be able to upload files or else I would include screenshots as well.

Thanks,
Andy

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Andrew, the problem with getting a blank area near the top of panels should have been fixed by the v1.8 update. If it isn't, can you send a short example that shows the problem?
Thanks. Ben

[Andrew Stamps]

I need to retract my "correction" of lines 133-134 of Panel.m. However, I believe I am now closer to an answer. In normalized units, the border/title area is excluded from the control area. You have to compensate for this when you specify the width and height to obj.ShowSelectedChild. I can provide code, if interested.

[Andrew Stamps]

I wanted to follow up on my previous comment. First, I believe lines 133-134 of Panel.m should be:

x0 = border;
y0 = border;

Also, the issue with the normalized panels appears to be that the uipanel reserves some space at the top of the panel such that a normalized position of [0 0 1 1] does not fully cover the area returned by getpixelpostion. I haven't figured out yet how to set/get what the "normalized" area actually is relative to the getpixelposition area.

Thanks,
Andy

[Andrew Stamps]

Ben,

I think this toolbox is fantastic. It has already saved me a ton of time. However, I wanted to point out one issue that has popped up recently. I believe that your bugfix in v1.7 that changed the unit-setting behavior when children are added has had some unintended consequences. Here's a simple example:

f = figure;
p1 = uiextras.Panel('Parent',f,'Title','Panel 1');
p2 = uiextras.Panel('Parent',p1,'Title','Panel 2');

This produces a figure where there is an overly large gap between the top of the first panel and the second inset panel. In previous versions (definitely v1.5) the gap was much tighter. If you specify pixel units for the second panel explicitly:

f = figure;
p1 = uiextras.Panel('Parent',f,'Title','Panel 1');
p2 = uiextras.Panel('Parent',p1,'Title','Panel 2','Units','pixels');

Then the figure initially looks the same as the first example, but then as soon as you do anything to resize the figure, the second panel suddenly snaps up tight to the first panel like it used to be.

I am guessing that your intentions are to have the results relatively independent of the units being used, but this does not appear to be the case.

Thanks,
Andy

[Holger]

Hi Ben,

just tried it and "print" and "save" (the toolbar buttons) do work. Many thanks for that!

But I think, you introduced a bug:
Try moving the vertical gridflex divider in your example "gridflexpositioning". Only the horizontal dividers are functional.

Thanks again,
Holger

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Holger, I've just updated the package with a fix for the printing problem. Let me know if you still have problems.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Holger, I'll look into the print problem on Monday. A work-around between now and then is to use getframe instead of print. Not ideal, I know. Hopefully I can get a fix out on Monday.

I'll have a think about the performance and see if there's a good way to reduce the number of redraws that happen.

Cheers. Ben

[Holger]

I like it.

Regarding the performance:
After outcommenting obj.redraw() at many locations it's not that slow and can be used for complicated layouts with many elements.
Especially Container::OnChildAdded() and set.Children() with obj.redraw() is a real peformance hit.
So, I'm building the GUI and call redraw() manually after all childs have been added.

Anoher peformance issue is ver('Matlab'). I simply use the old version, it also works in the newer versions.

One problem though:
My figure with a gridflex can not be printed or saved (e.g. as png). I get an error in Mathworks 'print.m'.

Any chance someone can look into it?

[Holger]

 

[Corey Gravelle]

umm SWEEeET!! This has been a savior, thanks a million (:

[Tony]

 

[andres llopis]

 

[Sherif Elnabarawy]

Finally got what i am looking for ! Brilliant effort , Excellent documentation ! Great thanks !
now , i am using that fcns but i need to ask about somethings , first can i assign more than one children to HBox or Vbox and give them a positioning values ? if i created boxes for every children needed to set their resizing state , then i'll create many boxes which slow down the app. .
second , can i merge specific boxes ?

Thanks a lot,
Sherif Elnabarawy.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi William, I haven't had chance to really dig into this in detail, but suspect the problem is with the structure. For some reason it looks like in R2010b calling the "double" method fails if the object is stored as a field of a structure. I haven't found any way around this other than to take a temporary copy of the layout before use:

temp = gui.aDetailPlotB;
axes1 = axes('Parent', temp, ... );

This then seems to work. This looks like a definite regression between R2010b and R2010a and I would encourage you to report it using the links on the MathWorks homepage. I will do the same!

Let me know if that works (even if it is a pain). Ben

[William Weideman]

I recently had to upgrade to the R2010b release and now I am having problems with passing handles to the objects created in the Gui Layout. It is a lot of code (a large layout with speed issues as Dani mentioned above.) I will show what is relevant IMHO.

global gui
...
function gui = createInterface()
% Create the user interface for the application and return a
% structure of handles for global use.
gui = struct();
...
gui.aDetailPlotB = uiextras.Panel('Parent', aDetailPlot, 'BackgroundColor', 'w', 'BorderType', 'none');

...

In another function file, the gui structure is passed as an argument and then we come down to:

axes1 = axes('Parent', gui.aDetailPlotB,
'ActivePositionProperty', 'OuterPosition');

I get the following error message.

??? Error using ==> axes
Conversion to double from unknown is not possible.

Stepping through the debugger, steps into Container.m (part of the +uiextras folder) where it dies in the function

function container = double( obj )
%double Convert a container to an HG double handle.
%
% D = double(C) converts a container C to an HG handle D.
container = obj.UIContainer;
end % double

I can't go back to R2010a so how do I get it working?

Thanks in advance.

[Dani]

The response times for large layouts becomes quite slow, mostly due to the frequent calls to getpixelposition. Even just switching from one figure menu to the other may take a while. Is it possible to deactivate the layout management? As long as a figure does not get resized all these calls are mostly unnecessary anyhow.

[David Sampson]

In response to the question regarding sizes of panel decorations, first let me state the obvious, just in case it isn't obvious. Once a panel with a container inside is on screen, you can call getpixelposition on the panel and the container inside to find the size of the decorations.

The GUI Layout Toolbox takes an outside-in approach in that contents do not influence the size of a container. You give a container some space and it lays out the contents as best it can. If the contents are too big for the container then they just disappear to the top or the right. This is fundamental to how the Toolbox works.

I have been expecting a request to support minimum sizes for contents. Anyone interested in this could extend their container of choice by adding a property and overloading redraw. Care is required to react as children are added and removed; see how we handle 'Sizes' for guidance.

The next question that arises is how to establish the minimum reasonable size for each child. I recommend hard-coding. uicontrols do provide a property 'Extent', but it doesn't return anything useful for combo boxes, and it gives the wrong answer for normalized units, and neither containers nor axes report Extent.

It is possible to enforce limits on figure size by hooking into the figure ResizeFcn. I don't advise trying this below the figure level.

[Joseph Burgel]

Just answered my own question, I'm handlng the 'callback' property of the tab control.That works just find.

Never mind...

[Joseph Burgel]

I need to handle the condition when a new tab is selected in the tab container. This would mean I'd like to handle the SelectedChild property change event. When I run findprop, I see that SetObservable is 0 for SelectedChild. Any suggestions? Any reason why this can't be 1? Thanks.

mp = findprop(Dat.Container.h_RightTabPanel,'SelectedChild')

mp =

meta.property handle
Package: meta

Properties:
Name: 'SelectedChild'
Description: ''
DetailedDescription: ''
GetAccess: 'public'
SetAccess: 'public'
Dependent: 1
Constant: 0
Abstract: 0
Transient: 0
Hidden: 0
GetObservable: 0
SetObservable: 0
AbortSet: 0
GetMethod: [function_handle]
SetMethod: [function_handle]
HasDefault: 0
DefiningClass: [1x1 meta.class]

[Dani]

Just tried to use an VBoxFlex and could not see not access the draggable dividers. Turned out that this was caused because I had created the figure with the DefaultUIControlUnit set to 'norm', the GUI Layout Toolbox seems to rely on this to be set to pixels.

Thanks for the answers to my other questions and comments!
(The size of the panel header/title height is still open though)

[David Sampson]

Dani, in response to your posting about vertical alignment of text in a row of controls, I agree that this is an issue. The issue is specific to the HBox.

We need a VerticalAlignment property for the uicontrol.

I think that the place to fix this is by creating a text label widget implemented as a uicontrol inside a uicontainer. The widget exposes a property to control vertical alignment and positions the uicontrol accordingly. I have created such a widget for inclusion in our upcoming GUI Controls Toolbox.

Another possibility is to set the vertical alignment in the underlying Java object, to which Yair Altman's findjobj can provide access.

I do not think that adding a property to provide vertical padding within the HBox is a good solution.

[David Sampson]

plotyy is another example of MATLAB using two axes at the same level of the HG hierarchy. Again, put the axes inside a container, and position the container.

>> h = uiextras.HBox( 'Padding', 10, 'Spacing', 10 );
>> c = uicontainer( 'Parent', h );
>> v = uiextras.VBox( 'Parent', h, 'Spacing', 10 );
>> for ii = 1:4, uicontrol( 'Parent', v, 'String', 'Press me' ); end
>> a = axes( 'Parent', c );
>> x = 0:0.1:10;
>> plotyy( a, x, sin( x ), x, 10*cos( x ) );
>> h.Sizes = [-1 150];

[Joseph Burgel]

One thing I'm dealing with now is the need to superimpose two axes over the top of each other. This, to get two Y axes on the same plot. My best guess is to put the two axes in a single uipanel and then add the panel to a parent container. Sound like a the best approach?

[David Sampson]

MATLAB draws colorbars on a second set of axes that is a sibling of the first. In order to position axes with a colorbar, put the axes inside a container, and position the container. MATLAB will take care of positioning the plot and colorbar inside the container.

>> h = uiextras.HBox( 'Padding', 10, 'Spacing', 10 );
>> c = uicontainer( 'Parent', h );
>> v = uiextras.VBox( 'Parent', h, 'Spacing', 10 );
>> for ii = 1:4, uicontrol( 'Parent', v, 'String', 'Press me' ); end
>> axes( 'Parent', c );
>> peaks; colorbar;
>> h.Sizes = [-1 150]

[Dani]

Last one - promised.

In your help files you show how one deals with the positioning of axes. However, most of the time one has axes with corresponding colorbars and it would be helpful to have a guideline on how to deal with having both of them.

[Dani]

More questions.

1.
uicontrols such as 'text' and 'edit' styles allow for changing of their height. The exception is 'popmenu', which insists on its default height (at least I found no way around it). Combined with the problem that uicontrols do not seem to allow for vertical positioning of the content we get rather ugly top alignment when we combine the different uicontrols, e.g.

figure
DUP = get(0, 'DefaultUicontrolPosition');
uicontrol('Style', 'popupmenu', 'String', {'Yes', 'No'}, 'Value', 1, 'Position', DUP);
uicontrol('Style', 'text', 'String', 'Test', 'Position', [5+DUP(1)+DUP(3), DUP(2:4)], 'HorizontalAlignment', 'left');

The GridBagLayout contribution by Jason in the File Exchange addresses this problem by allowing to specify insets such as 'TopInset'. I think a solution to this problem is necessary since the UIs resulting from code such as the above fragment really don't look professional.

2.
Another nice feature of GridBagLayout is that it allows for easy distribution of elements. Let's assume that I have a panel with a VBox that contains 3 HBoxes with some uicontrols. I would like to specify the height of the individual entry in VBox to the default height of uicontrols, which is possible with 'Sizes'. However I would like these three rows be equally distributed throughout the height of the panel, which means that 'Spacing' in VBox should be calculated automatically, which is not the case.

Any ideas how to address these two cases?

[Dani]

Thanks for adding the possibility to set the defaults!

I have another request. In order to figure out how large a figure should be it is necessary to know all the sizes of the objects that one puts into them. I have a VBox with several panels, which in turn again contain VBoxes that contain HBoxes. I can specify all the sizes and gaps, with the exception of how much the title of the panels takes. It looks like it takes approx. 15 pixels, however, it would be useful if you would specify this value for the various types of panels. Thanks.

[Tanyer Alan]

 

[Joseph Burgel]

Thanks for the post. The examples won't run. I'm using ML 7.5 2007b. 2007b doesn't support 'packages'. So, I guess this toolbox won't work for me right? Bummer, it would have been a big help. Thanks.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Jaoa,

It should have worked with R2008b although it isn’t designed to do so and hasn’t been thoroughly tested on anything before R2010a. Whilst the examples in the documentation use the new ‘~’ syntax, the toolbox code itself does not use any R2010a specific language features. I have removed the “feature” command that crept in and will upload a new version that should work for you. We have targeted the current shipping release as that is the version used by the majority of the customers with whom we are working on GUI building projects.

The doc comment is a bit misleading – the “doc” wrapper I have supplied works around a deliberate change in the doc command introduced in R2007a and present in all subsequent releases. It is necessary in order for the doc command to find user toolbox documentation. I have improved the comments in this function accordingly.

Watch this space for an update soon!

[Joao Henriques]

This seems pretty neat, but I can't get it to work with R2008b. Isn't backward compatibility a concern? At least to some degree -- 2008b is not that old (we're in 2010), and I like it as a stable platform; I can't change every year :)

More specifically, some examples use the brand-new "~ for unused parameters" functionality (which is fixed easily), and calls to the "feature" function result in the error "An unknown feature was specified".
>> which feature
built-in (undocumented)

All in all, this seems like a good system and I'd love to try it, but it only seems directed at the newest ML release (which seems odd, considering it includes a "doc" replacement that intends to fix a R2007 problem).

[DNF]

A problem with the HButtonBox for aligning text is that the text control cannot be vertically aligned inside its own bounding box. So HButtonBox resizes the text uicontrol and then the text appears above its intended position.

Perhaps using a swing text control fixes this, but maybe it would be possible make something specifically for lining up text?

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Felix,

another thought - if all you want is to centre something vertically or horizontally, the HButtonBox and VButtonBox might help you. Don't let the names mislead you, these can layout any widgets! They allow control over the content size and justification in a way that is messy to achieve using standard box layouts.

[Felix]

Hi Ben,

thanks for the hint. I had a feeling it might be a scoping issue and tried assigning the handle to a WS variable, which seems to have been only half of the solution. I was able to use uipanels in place of the Empties successfully, though.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Felix,

this is a problem of scoping that is fixed in v1.3 (awaiting approval right now). Whilst you wait for this update, the solution is to keep hold of the empty element so that it doesn't go out of scope and get deleted. "e = uiextras.Empty();setappdata(e,'MyObject',e)" would do the trick (this is what the fix does behind the scenes and it ensures that the object only goes out of scope when the graphics themselves die).

Sorry about that - hopefully the fixed version will appear here very soon.

[Magnus]

This is exactly what I was looking for! Finally it is possible to make a nice-looking GUI. It took a while to find the toolbox, googling for "java layout matlab" gave some hits to people with the same intentions of producing GUIs with java-type layout. A big thanks to Ben and the other authors of this toolbox.

[Felix]

A great submission, very well structured. Great documentation, too.

I seem to have issues with using uiextra.Empy, though. when I put Empties in a VBox or HBox among other child elements, the empties vanish from the layout, either when I add more children or even when I do get(layout,'Children'). It's not that they are not displayed, they are actually gone and the layout changes.

The full problem is that I try to center a text uicontrol vertically, by putting it in a VBox Layout with an Empty above and one beneath it.

[David Sampson]

A reasonable request, but not possible at this time, since these are not builtin Handle Graphics classes. We'll have to think about whether there is another reasonable way to provide the ability to specialize such default property values without bloating the API. Thanks for the feedback.

[Dani]

This contribution is fantastic! Very easy to use, fast, and reliable.

One question though. When I use standard user interface objects I can set their defaults through, for example, set(0, 'DefaultUipanelBackgroundColor'). This functionality is very useful as it allows for a centralized control of the GUI looks. Is there a possibility to have the same for the GUI Layout Toolbox, so that, for example, the standard TitleColor in the BoxPanel can be set to something else than bright blue?

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Jesse, I understand your pain - I have been through a similar exercise myself in the past.

For better or worse, the MATLAB object system is case-sensitive. Whilst there are (undocumented) ways to make property access case-insensitive, the object names and methods will always be case sensitive. Using the incorrect case for property access can be between 5 and 10 times slower and it is very likely that in the distant future all MATLAB objects, graphics or otherwise, will become case sensitive for that reason.

In my opinion (humble or otherwise) it's better to have a one-off hit on my time converting the code than a permanent performance hit for users of my application. I guess that depends on the scale of the changes and the number of users though.

Thanks for the feedback, and let me know if you find other problems or have other suggestions.

[Jesse Hopkins]

Excellent submission, very feature rich layout editor. I do have one nit-pick however, which is that when using set/get function, the property names are case-sensitive. This is different then the behavior for figure handles and other matlab graphics handles, and has caused some difficulty trying to port some existing GUIs to using this layout manager.

[Ben Tordoff]

Hi Jveer,

GUIs built using this tool can definitely be deployed as executable applications, but you need to remember to include any icons or other resources that are used (basically the stuff in the "+uiextras/Resources" folder). I'll add some documentation explaining this in more detail.

This toolbox is all about laying out widgets in an interface rather than providing any widgets, so trees don't really fit in. I've used the built-in UITREE with some success in the past, even though it claims to be experimental. You can also pull any Java or ActiveX tree widgets into a MATLAB GUI fairly easily. I do have a toolbox of enhanced widgets that I'll publish here soon, but unfortunately there are no trees in it.

[Jveer]

looks amazing!

any chance of seeing support for tree objects any time soon?

also, can guis created using this tool be compiled into standalone applications using the matlab compiler?

[Matthew Whitaker]

Completely brilliant and easy to use. Extremely well documented. Hopefully this will become part of core MATLAB in the future.

The only trivial thing I have so far is that the layoutRoot function seems to be missing from the dowload

[Sam Mirsky]