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matlabformattingalignmentuicontrol

Aligning text and edit uicontrols

I am creating GUI and I want to have inputs and results there.

I have text fields as labels and edit or popup for inputs. When I have

uicontrol('style','text','string','foo','units','centimeters','position',[1 1 1 0.5]);
uicontrol('style','edit','string','foo','units','centimeters','position',[2 1 1 0.5]);

I get the foo strings slightly misaligned, baseline of the text field is slightly above the baseline of edit/pop field.

How can I align those fields?

Solution

  • Unfortunately this requires accessing the underlying Java. The method is similar to Amro's approach here for a pushbutton and utilizes the external findjobj function:

    h.t = uicontrol('style','text','string','foo','units','centimeters','position',[1 1 1 0.5]);
h.e = uicontrol('style','edit','string','foo','units','centimeters','position',[2 1 1 0.5]);
jh = findjobj(h.t);
jh.setVerticalAlignment(javax.swing.JLabel.CENTER)

    Unfortunately, this is still off by a pixel or two:

    yay

    I'd say just bump the text box by pixel, as necessary:

    oldunits = get(h.t, 'Units');
set(h.t, 'Units', 'Pixels');
pos = get(h.t, 'Position');

pos(2) = pos(2) + 1;

set(h.t, 'Position', pos)
set(h.t, 'Units', oldunits)

    Which gives us:

    yay2

    Edit: Modifying the BackgroundColor property of the edit box has no effect (though setting it to none makes it a black box...), and the box will remain the default color. Per The MathWorks, this is a design decision:

    This is a expected behavior in the way that MATLAB displays the BackgroundColor for editable text objects.

    This could also most likely be updated by leveraging the underlying Java, but I'm not familiar.