TCPmaker : Visual Tour    Advanced Properties of Controls  

The scale factors _xScale and _yScale allow you to stretch or compress the size of a control in the horizontal or vertical direction, or both, relative to the default size of +100 (percent).

One obvious use is to adjust the size of any control.  Although our controls are mostly fixed size by default, you can use _xScale and _yScale to make them any size you want.  Note that any lettering that is inside a control is scaled proportionally with the rest of the control.

These scale factors can be negative as well, to mirror the control about one or both axes. We've used this capability to add a "reflection" of the text item that reads "_yScale = +100". By adjusting the _yScale value to -80, the reflection is mirrored about the horizontal axis and foreshortened in a realistic way.  Setting _alpha = 50 makes the reflection look dim, and nudging the _x position and _y position controls lines up the reflection just the way we want.

 

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