Re: Error when drawing grid, grid lines a bit too short

From:
Eric Lilja <mindcoolerremoveme@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.vc.mfc
Date:
Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:46:14 +0200
Message-ID:
<upUqJoOvHHA.4720@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl>
Thanks for the quick reply, Joseph, see below and my reply to myself
that I wrote before I saw this.

Joseph M. Newcomer wrote:

See below...
On Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:30:03 +0200, Eric Lilja <mindcoolerremoveme@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello, as I've mentioned in some other post I'm making a simple "Game of
 Life" with a small, fixed-sized grid. Anyway, the function I used for
drawing the actual grid was written ages ago when doing some pure Win32
programming and it was full of magic numbers, assuming a 16*16 grid. I
tried to rewrite it without magic numbers and to take the actual size
into consideration. Right now each cell in the grid is 20*20 and I have
horizontal and vertical bars that are four pixels wide. The x and y
offset is 20 pixels.

Hope I explained it properly, here's the code:

void MyView::DrawGrid(CDC *dc)
{
   static const int cell_width = 20;
   static const int cell_height = 20;

   static const int initial_x_offset = 20;
   static const int initial_y_offset = 20;

   static const int grid_bar_thickness = 4;
   static CPen pen(PS_SOLID, grid_bar_thickness, RGB(0x00, 0x00, 0xFF));

   dc->SelectObject(&pen);

   /* Drawing vertical lines. */
   int x = initial_x_offset;
   int y = initial_y_offset;

   for (int i = 0; i < (num_cols_ + 1); ++i)
   {
      dc->MoveTo(x, y);
      dc->LineTo(x, grid_bar_thickness * (num_rows_ + 1) + num_rows_ *
cell_height);

****
Note that lines do not include the endpoint of the drawing. So if you do a Lineto(10,20)
you will get a line to (9,19). The debate about inclusive vs. exclusive has been going on
for years, and ultimately it is a coin-toss. The inclusive drawing gives a *different*
set of problems and so you end up doing a lot of -1 adjustments for that choice, and a lot
of +1 adjustments for the exclusive technique. The decision can easily be decided by
tossing a coin because whatever the outcome, there will be serious issues.
*****

      x += cell_width + grid_bar_thickness;
   }

   /* Drawing horizontal lines. */
   x = initial_x_offset;
   y = initial_y_offset;

   for (int i = 0; i < (num_rows_ + 1); ++i)
   {
      dc->MoveTo(x, y);
      dc->LineTo(grid_bar_thickness * (num_cols_ + 1) + num_cols_ *
cell_width, y);

      y += cell_height + grid_bar_thickness;
   }
}

I'm testing a grid with 16 rows and 18 columns. I suspect I'm missing to
take something into account when calling LineTo() because the grid lines
are not as long as they should be, neither vertically nor horizontally.
Here's a screenshot of how it looks:
http://student.stunet.se/hivemind/grid.png

****
It looks like cumulative error caused by the off-by-1 issue.


Good point about LineTo() not drawing that endpoint, I can see it causes
problems and I will try to remember to account for that when I use it
next time. But say if everything else was correct wouldn't that mean in
my case that my grid lines were one pixel too short? I don't see the
accumulation taking place here. I did however forget to take into
account the x and y offsets if you see my reply to myself. Also had to
withdraw width of the grid line from the offset for it to look OK.

*****

Where am I going wrong here? I've made sure the values of num_rows_ and
num_cols_ are correct using the debugger. Also, I'm getting the cells
coordinates correct I just have problems with the grid lines. :)

- Eric

Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: newcomer@flounder.com
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm

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