building layout/view dynamically

[gabrielcrowe]

first post, from an excited vbscript refugee.

i'v had a search, and a poke around at various pieces of source, but this one is killing me.

i can load files from disk and such, csv, in this case. and i can build a gui by hand, a static one, thats not a problem. what i really would like to do is use the data from a text file to position buttons and to assign them functions. their labels, colours and such, should all be defined from the txt file.

i tried to do some magic from inside the view[] but it errors every time, a simple array loop would do it, but..always an error.

is what i need actually possible?  :huh:

thanks for your time everyone.

[Graham]

A vid layout is dynamically constructed!

If you have a VID layout as a file, you can try something like this

; read it in first
lo: read %mylayout.r

; convert to block so it can be parsed
lo: to-block lo

; now bind it so that Rebol understands what context the words are to be interpreted
; let's bind it to layout

bind lo 'layout

; now you can do this

view layout lo

; untested and hope it helps.

[Gabriele]

Graham, in that case, just do:

Code:

view layout load %mylayout.r

But I think he's asking for something different.

gabrielcrowe, you may either need COMPOSE or doing something like:

Code:

lay: copy [
   ; any initial VID code before the buttons you are adding
]
foreach [text size] ["One" 100 "Two" 200 "Three" 110] [
    append lay compose [btn (text) (size)]
]
view layout lay

Basically you just build the layout block by appending code to it (or manipulating it in any other way - it's just a block), then call LAYOUT on it.

[gabrielcrowe]

spot on, and both raised some interesting ideas.

Code:

REBOL []
   defaultdata: read/lines %default.txt
lay: copy [

]

foreach datarow defaultdata [
parsed-block: parse datarow "#"
foreach [text size] [parsed-block] [
    append lay compose [btn (text) (size)]
]
]

view layout lay

my file default.txt contains:

Code:

"buttonname1"#100
"buttonname2"#300
"buttonname3"#200

it makes 3 buttons i'm assuming them to be the rows in my txt, but how do i split the rows up for use in the building of the buttons. lol, this is all very confuddling. but fun, nonetheless.

[gabrielcrowe]

i also tried this:

Code:

REBOL []
   defaultdata: read %default.txt

lay: copy [

]

foreach [text size] [defaultdata] [
    append lay compose [btn (text) (size)]
]

view layout lay

with my txt as this:

Code:

"One" 100 "Two" 200 "Three" 110

no dice. i think perhaps i dont understand how to use blocks. lol.

[Graham]

defaultdata: to-block read %default.txt

otherwise it's a string ...

[gabrielcrowe]

nope, i tried that, and i get an error about it being 'none'

Unrecognized parameter: none

it draws a single button, thats all.

[Philippe]

Hello,

The problem comes from your code : you use a foreach loop with [defaultdata] (block!), no defaultdata.
Try this, it works, with default.txt like this :
"buttonname1" 100
"buttonname2" 300
"buttonname3" 200

Code:

defaultdata: load %default.txt

lay: copy []

foreach [text size] defaultdata [
    append lay compose [btn (text) (size)]
]

view layout lay

===Philippe