Suggestion: Bordered/Snapped-to Awareness

[NewWave]

I've created some skins that change shape when touching the edges of the work area/screen --sort of a docked state.

What I would find useful is the ability to have my skins understand when they are bordered/snapped-to by another skin which is not my own. Most skins are rectangular and I could square-up the shared side.

Perhaps if a given skin could understand that another is touching it, things like inheriting values from one another to share a similar width or height could be done.

What think?

[thatsIch]

I've created some skins that change shape when touching the edges of the work area/screen --sort of a docked state.

What I would find useful is the ability to have my skins understand when they are bordered/snapped-to by another skin which is not my own. Most skins are rectangular and I could square-up the shared side.

Perhaps if a given skin could understand that another is touching it, things like inheriting values from one another to share a similar width or height could be done.

What think?

afaik they are already doing it if you have done it right. Most times its just a matter of W and H's being too big so they won't snap

(for example you have a 1000x1000 text area with just hello in it. It will be displayed as a small string but in reality is 1000x1000 and other skins wont snap at it cause the border is out of screen)

[MerlinTheRed]

I don't think that's what he means...

[thatsIch]

then what else?
that you can drag n drop multiple skins at once when they are snapped`?

[MerlinTheRed]

I understand it like he wants a skin to be able to know if another skin is docked to it and where (perhaps via a built-in variable), so you can program the skin to react to other skins being docked to it.

[NewWave]

I understand it like he wants a skin to be able to know if another skin is docked to it and where (perhaps via a built-in variable), so you can program the skin to react to other skins being docked to it.

That would be it.

[thatsIch]

so something like adding "child" skins to a "parent" one
kinda like it

[Kaelri]

There would be some complications with this. Right now, there is no mechanism for one skin to retrieve values from another skin, and there are too many permutations to simply add more built-in variables for every possibility. Some new measure, plugin or Lua functions would probably be needed.

Then there's the issue of interpreting "snapping." If two (or more) skins are overlapped such that they share an edge, another skin could be "snapped" to both of them, so it would be ambigious which skin to "inherit" values from. And there are other details to consider: what if two skins only share a corner? Or the left edge and the top-left corner? Bottom edge and bottom-right corner? And what if one of the skins has "snap to edges" disabled - do we still consider them "bordered" for the purposes of this feature?

I don't think there is an obvious solution at this time. We are certainly open to ideas, though.

[johnnyrags]

I am obviously not the most knowledgeable about coding solutions, but would a system to involve grouping in skins work for something like this? Example being if you want functionality to have skins "snapped" you could code them into a group that could then utilize certain functions within that group only. that would allow multiple skins that are sharing edges or "snapped" to still function as intended if they are not grouped with all of the skins that are sharing edges.

from a development perspective, I would assume that this would be a rather substantial overhaul or a rather involved module to include to Rainmeter, but down the line, perhaps would add a vast amount of functionality to how skins interact and can be displayed on screen.