Fixed positions on Home Screens

[Guest Honest John]

I would like to produce a screen that fixes some lines - say the SMS/Email/MMS line - on a particular line on the SPV screen - again , say, the bottom line.

Looking at some of the Home screens on the forum, they work along the lines of if the screen has the facility for notifying you of a missed call, then all the following plug-ins drop down a line and if you have used the full area of the screen, the bottom line drops off. (See Shak's home screen for example where his author's signature drops off if you get a missed call).

I understand that the phone works in Axes, but I am damned if I can see how this works in, say, the Symbios layout where the SMS line stays anchored.

What I would like to do is to have an area on the screen that will hold my diary and all day events info, but, If I get a missed call or I have a call in progress, these would take priority on the screen using the same space if possible and "bumping off" temporarily the diary events.

The screen is just that little bit too small to hold all the fields that I would like to view and too cluttered if you try to cram them all in.

Any help on understanding this would be gratefully received - you may gather that I am not a red hot XML technocrat and it was in abacus days that I studied maths.

[Guest spacemonkey]

No, it is pretty tricky. Basically screens that need fixed positioning only manage it by deliberately not using plugins that appear and dissappear.

As to what it sounds like you want... I think you mean that if the missed call plugin "appears" then you want the dairy plugin to "dissappear", unfortunately I don't think you can make one plugin dependant on another in this way.

I personally am happy to not use these dissappear/reappearing plugins cos missed calls/voice mail still appears on the icon bar at the top.

[Guest Honest John]

Thanks, Spacemonkey.

You have got the point I was making. If I could have fixed the diary message on line 14, for example, by having the Missed Calls visible on line 14 if present as a subsequent plug-in, then that would have been what I wanted.

As a matter of clarification, how do you specify what line you want things to appear on.? I still can't fathom out how this works in XML. I understand the X & Y axis , but can't see how this is working in the XML examples I have downloaded. How would I jump to, say 3/4 down the page from 1/4 down the page?

[Guest spacemonkey]

Basically each plugin just appear below the previous one. To fix positions just control it with the height of the entries...

So:

...

...

...

gives you 2 plugins at the top of the screen and then a third pushed right to the bottom. As long as none of these dissappear then they won't move.

inside a plugin you can position stuff explicitly with x and y like

blah

You can even make these negative like y="-5" but there are limits to how much this can overlap into other plugins before they get clipped.

The plugin tag itself doesn't support x,y or width and there's no way I know of to put 2 plugins beside each other.

Hope that useful.

[Guest Honest John]

Got it. Thanks.

It's a shame that the plugins can't reuse space as in Window drop downs, but maybe in later releases................

[Guest spacemonkey]

Well, the other thing is you can potentially write your own plugins in eMbedded Visual C, so these cold potentially be made to have some more sophisticated drawing options... Quite a lot of effort to go to though compared to XML tweaks. Also, you want to get them right cos the message count plugin that Orange wrote seems to eat your batteries and doesn't support all the positioning options you'd expect.

[Guest zenabi]

If I'm understanding correctly, you want something similar to this example:

You have a home screen that consists of the iconbar, clock and calendar plugins. All of these currently fill the entire screen.

When you have missed a call, you want the screen to show only the iconbar, clock and the missed call plugin.

If so, then all you need to do is set the height of the missed call plugin so it fills the remainder of the screen. If you now place the plugin above the calendar one, when you miss a call the plugin will bump the calendar one off the bottom of the screen.

If I have misunderstood completely, then ignore everything I've just said ;) .

[Guest Honest John]

If you look at 0909's home screen on this forum,

http://www2.modaco.com/smartphone/viewtopi...ee5d279eb123b33

you will see that he has the SMS/MMS/Email messages at the foot of the screen in defined areas. I would like something similar, but the middle section to hold the diary events normally, but if some information on missed calls or calls in progress come in, then these should use the middle area and NOT bump the SMS/MMS/Email line off the bottom.

The alternative is for me to hold the SMS/MMS/Email and Profile boxes above the diary info.

[Guest zenabi]

Ah I understand now, but sorry I can't think of any way to do that...