Is weight the best way to do "percentage based layouts" in compose? It seems to do what I want... bu...

# compose

[Colton Idle]

Is weight the best way to do "percentage based layouts" in compose? It seems to do what I want... but I know that weights distributes stuff at a second "pass" so I'm not sure if that will necessarily always get me the size I was going for.

"parent will divide the vertical space remaining after measuring"

All I want to do is something like

Column(fillMaxHeight){
Box(height(percent = 50))
Box(height(percent = 50))
}

[cah]

fillMaxHeight takes a float that will do this

Box(Modifier.fillMaxHeight(0.5f))

[Ian Lake]

And it isn't a second pass - it just changes the measurement order to measure non-weighted items first, then distribute the rest of the space to weighted items

[Colton Idle]

@cah if I do

Box(Modifier.fillMaxHeight(0.5f))
Box(Modifier.fillMaxHeight(0.5f))

then the second box takes up 25% of the available space
leaving me with 25% left of free space

[Colton Idle]

@Ian Lake interesting. so maybe i dont have to worry about a condition where having weight 1f and another weight 1f (like my example above) and it somehow being like a 60/40 split.

[Ian Lake]

Distribution of the remaining space for weighted items is a fraction - weight / (sum of all weights) so it doesn't matter if you use 0.5f for both or 1f for both since they're the same fraction of the sum

[Colton Idle]

understood. my "worry" was more "could there ever be a way to possibly have an uneven split by doing"

Column(fillMaxHeight){
Box(weight(1f))
Box(weight(1f))
}

just because i was worried about the whole "parent will divide the vertical space remaining after measuring"

So like. if it goes to layout the first box and it takes up 60% of the space because it has a bunch of tall content (idk, like a lot of text?) would that mean that you'd get less space in the second box.

[Colton Idle]

But I think your point of "And it isn't a second pass - it just changes the measurement order to measure non-weighted items first, then distribute the rest of the space to weighted items" basically guarantees that wouldn't happen.

non weighted items go first (in my case i dont have any non-weighted) and then distribute the weight to the items with weights.

so i guess id always get 50/50 split. effectively percent based layouts

[Ian Lake]

Yep, that's the key benefit of using weights

[Colton Idle]

Cool. I think I was misunderstanding when weights are applied etc. Thanks for teaching!