Pane Classes

In keeping with my philosophy of non-monolithic classes, you are not required to use the whole batch when you only need one or two. The class diagram to the right shows which pane classes require which other ones; as you can see, you never need more than two other classes for any particular pane class. (Note: some of the newest pane classes are not shown.)

You can download the files individually below, or get the whole set at http://www.strout.net/files/panes.sea.hqx.

The descriptions below are a little brief, because the clases are relatively simple. Please examine the header file for full member definitions.

• Pane.h defines the base class for all the other classes described here. All panes have a rectangular extent defined by mFrame which describes the pane's size and position. Pane is an abstract base class; derived classes must define at least the Draw method.

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• TextPane.h and TextPane.cpp define a pane which draws a string on a single line. The string to be drawn is contained by mText (a Pascal string). Various other members allow you to set the text font, size, style, color, alignment (within the mFrame), and shadow color (if any).

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• UrlPane.h and UrlPane.cpp define a subclass of TextPane which, when clicked, launches the URL via Internet Config. The URL may be defined in the mURL member variable, or if this is left empty, the text itself (mText) will be used as the URL.

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• IconPane.h and IconPane.cpp define a pane which draws itself as a color icon. You give the constructor the resource number of the first 'cicn' resource to load, and the quantity of icons that should be loaded. If this quantity is more than one (it defaults to two), an IconPane can act like a button: when you click it, the pane's state (i.e., which icon is drawn) is incremented. If mPopBack is true, this increment will be only temporary, thus giving you a standard push-button behavior. If it is false (the default), then the button stays in its new state until clicked again.

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• PictPane.h and PictPane.cpp define a pane which draws a PICT resource. You pass the constructor the ID number of the PICT to be drawn, and the frame will automatically be set to the picture's size. The picture memory is released when the pane is destroyed.

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• Enclosure.h and Enclosure.cpp define a pane contains (encloses) other panes. The contained panes are stored in a SimpleVector of pane pointers; add a new one with code such as myEncl.mSubpanes.push_back( &myOtherPane ). (Note: If an enclosed pane is destroyed, then either its enclosure must also be destroyed, or the pointer to the destroyed pane must be found and removed from mSubpanes.) Enclosures have the following effects:
  1. Subpane drawing is clipped to the enclosure's bounds.
  2. Subpane coordinates are all relative to the enclosure's upper-left corner.
  3. If the Enclosure's mOwnsSubpanes flag is true (the default), then when the Enclosure dies, all of its subpanes are destroyed as well.
  This is a very powerful mechanism for building a complex interface. Note that if you use this class, you will also need to get SimpleVector, or else modify it to use some other vector class.

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• ScrollbarPane.h and ScrollbarPane.cpp implement a scroll bar. You'd think that with the Toolbox, making a simple scroll bar would be easy, but in fact it's a major pain -- unless you use a class like this, which handles the ugly details for you. As a bonus, your scroll bar will be fully compliant with Smart Scroll (though this is not required, by you or your users).

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• ScrollPane.h and ScrollPane.cpp provide a scrolling view onto some other pane. You can have horizontal or vertical scrollbars (or both), and even reserve extra room to the left of the horizontal scroll bar or at the top of the vertical one if you need space for indicators, pop-up menus, etc. This class is simple to use but very powerful. You can place a ScrollPane in the middle of a dialog, or have one giant ScrollPane in your window, making it into a standard scrolling document window (great for use with Moof).

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• TEPane.h and TEPane.cpp provide a TextEdit (input) field, usable in any window. To use this properly, you'll want to call its special methods to handle Cut, Copy, Paste, and window activation/deactivation.

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• TwistPane.h and TwistPane.cpp, plus the resource file TwistPaneIcons.rsrc (which you may need to get from the full distribution), provide a little twisty triangle like those in the Finder and the CodeWarrior group panes. It's not Appearance-savvy, but it works under all versions of MacOS.

Share and enjoy! Please send bug reports, questions, or comments to joe@strout.net.