uipanel border type problem

I am designing a GUI where I want to nest 2 or 3 panels in such a way they are perfectly aligned. If I run the following code to nest 100 panels (just an extreme example) inside each other:

    a = figure  
    b=uipanel(a, 'units', 'pixels', 'position', [10, 10, 200, 200]);
    for i=1:99
      b = uipanel(b, 'units', 'pixels', 'BorderType', 'etchedout','OuterPosition',  [1, 1, 200, 200]);
      b.Position(1:2) = b.Position(1:2)-b.BorderWidth;
    end

I get this:

I corrected the border width offset, but still the panels are not properly aligned. This problem doesn't happen if I use a border of type 'line'. Is there any way to perfectly align all the nested panels for any border type?

In addition, for a 'BorderWidth' of 1, a border of type 'line' has still a different width than a border of type 'etchedout'. It also should be '0' when border type is 'none', but is still '1'. How to find the true border width?

Regards

[Geoff Hayes]

Andre - why do you have (or need) 100 panels?

[Jan]

100 nested uipanels? I cannot imagine that there is any need to do this. So maybe the solution is not to solve the problem, but to find a better method to do, what you need.

[André]

The 100 nested was just an extreme example. I am designing a GUI where I nested just 2 panels and this is the result:

See the top of the panels? They are not perfeclty aligned as I would like them to be. This way my GUI looks less elegant since these panels are to be used as margins for different types of content in the GUI. I am sure this has to do with the border widths..

Regards, André

[Jan]

@André: Please post the code, which creates the shown figure and which reproduces the problem. This is more useful than posting some other code, which creates 100 nested panel, which you do not need at all. I'm not sure, which detail the actual problem is.

[André]

The code is on the bottom of this post. Please ignore the panelInterdistances parameter, I set it to 0. The following figure explains my reasoning:

In the image, the blue panel object is insede another panel. p is the original vertical Position(2) of the blue panel, according to the definition of the MATLAB documentation: Distance from the inner bottom edge of the parent container to the outer bottom edge of the panel (by default p=1pixel, which correspondes to 0 in normalized units), m is the border width, h1 is the container panel heigth --Position(4)-- and h2 is the height of the blue panel. So if I want to perfeclty align an object from below, I just need to set p=0 and subtract m. On the other hand, if I want to perfeclty align an object from above, my start position is given by the red equation.

The great question here is: What is the true value of m in pixels? It seems to be different when I choose a "etchedout" border and when I choose a "line" border. Even if the BorderType = 'none', the BorderWidth property is sill 1. So I conclude that m is not the BorderWidth value. In fact, from my 100 panels experiment with BorderWidth=1, it seems that:

• m=1 for "etchedout"
• m=0 for "line"
• m=-1!!! for "none".

You can confirm this by running the 100 panel experiment code with different border types and varying the start position between -1,0 and 1. Or I am completely wrong with the reasoning of the scheme I attached.

Another thing I found out is that I can properly align the 100 panels from below or from above, using the code aboce, but I cannot do the same with my GUI, using the code below. I suspect it has to do with rounding errors from the panel dimension calculations when dividing the GUI into various panels...

     %%Screen dimensions
          screenResolution = get(0,'screensize');
          screen_Width = screenResolution(3);
          screen_Height = screenResolution(4);

          %%Figure dimensions       
          FIG_dims = [screen_Width, screen_Height]*0.8;

          FIG_Position = [(screen_Width-FIG_dims(1))/2,...
                          (screen_Height-FIG_dims(2))/2,...
                          FIG_dims];

          %%Draw the figure
          FIG = figure('Tag', 'FIG',...
                       'Visible', 'on',... % Switch to off??????????????????
                       'Units', 'pixels',...
                       'OuterPosition', FIG_Position);

          drawnow; % Correct OuterPosition bugs (size will be wrong if I dont do this).   

   %%Parameters

outerMargins          = 0.01*FIG.Position(3);
panelInterDistance    = 0/2;
Main_Size             = 0.9;     %   90% of mother panel height is for the main panel and 10% for the footer panel.
left_right_ratio      = 0.9;     % left panel is 10% smaller (in width) than right panel (not considering the panel inter distance).

%%Mother panel 

Mother_Dims     = [FIG.Position(3) - 2*outerMargins,... 
                   FIG.Position(4) - 2*outerMargins];

Mother_Position = [outerMargins,...
                   outerMargins,...
                   Mother_Dims];

PANEL_Mother = uipanel(FIG, 'Tag', 'PANEL_Mother',...
                'Units', 'pixels',...
                'Position', Mother_Position,...
                'BorderType', 'etchedout');                

%%Main panel

Main_Height     =  Mother_Dims(2)*Main_Size-panelInterDistance/2;

Main_Dims       =  [Mother_Dims(1), Main_Height];

Main_Position   =  [-1,...
                    Mother_Dims(2)-Main_Height-1-1,...
                    Main_Dims];

PANEL_Main   = uipanel(PANEL_Mother, 'Tag', 'PANEL_Main',...
                'Units', 'pixels',...
                'Position', Main_Position,...
                'BorderType', 'etchedout');       

%%Footer panel

Footer_Height   = Mother_Dims(2)*(1-Main_Size)-panelInterDistance/2;

Footer_Dims     = [Mother_Dims(1), Footer_Height];

Footer_Position = [-1,...
                   -1,...
                   Footer_Dims];

PANEL_Footer = uipanel(PANEL_Mother, 'Tag', 'PANEL_Footer',...
                'Units', 'pixels',...
                'Position', Footer_Position,...
                'BorderType', 'etchedin');    

%%Left panel

Left_Dims       = [(Main_Dims(1)*left_right_ratio-panelInterDistance)/2, Main_Dims(2)];

Left_Position   = [-1,...
                   -1,...
                   Left_Dims];

PANEL_Left   = uipanel(PANEL_Main, 'Tag', 'PANEL_Left',...
                'Units', 'pixels',...
                'Position', Left_Position,...
                'BorderType', 'etchedout');

%%Right panel
Right_Dims      = [(Main_Dims(1)*(1+(1-left_right_ratio))-panelInterDistance)/2, Main_Dims(2)];

Right_Position = [1+Left_Dims(1)+panelInterDistance,...
                  -1,...
                  Right_Dims];

PANEL_Right  = uipanel(PANEL_Main, 'Tag', 'PANEL_Right',...
                'Units', 'pixels',...
                'Position', Right_Position,...
                'BorderType', 'etchedout');