`Place` was a product written as a sum -- a `Part` and a fill flag -- and
`Part` named three operations the geometry already had, under words that did
not match them. `Of` was `UiSpan::within`, `From` was `UiSpan::shift`, and
`Sized` was `placement`'s own body with the length given rather than
reported. Both enums are gone.
`PlaceDescAxis` says one axis, named after the operation it performs:
`within`, `shifted`, `sized`, and `WHOLE`. What is optional is a builder --
`fills` and `rel_base` -- so a caller writes only what it decided, and the
rel base it does not write follows the constructor: a span composed into the
caller's box narrows it, a span along a cursor does not, a decided length is
it. That was the one rule a caller could get wrong with nothing failing.
`PlaceDesc` says both axes with named fields, so `axis`, `axis_mut` and
`from_axis` work the way they do on every other pair here, and the joint
work -- resolving a region, reading the fill flags -- is written once rather
than per axis. `widget_at` and `place_at` take `impl Into<PlaceDesc>`, so a
wrapper passes a `UiRegion` and says nothing else. `widget_within` and
`ActiveData::narrow_rel_base` are deleted; `asked` and `placed` carry the
rel base their ask stated.
Cold layout is byte-identical to `84dad21`.
`frame` named a length, not a rectangle, which was the one word in the
layout vocabulary that lied about its own shape. It is `rel_base`: what a
fraction a widget declares or reports is a fraction of.
Three API changes with it, all for containers that do one simple thing:
- `widget_within(id, region)` returns, taking a box in the widget's own
coordinates and deriving the child's rel base from it. `Offset` and `Pad`
are one call each again. `Offset` also stops reading `region_len`, which
pinned its drawing to a box length it does not care about.
- `place_at` takes the rel base, returns the answer, and asks the child
where there is no answer to re-express. Which of the two happens is the
painter's to work out, so `Span`'s second pass is one call and its
`drawn_across` bookkeeping is gone.
- `Part::All` is a `Part::WHOLE` constant rather than a variant, since it
was exactly `Of(UiSpan::FULL)` and bought a separate arm in two matches.
Measured at 0.07% of instructions retired against 0.04% run-to-run noise.
Cold layout is byte-identical to `84dad21` over 400 depth-5 trees.
The split box was named `region` and `placement` on 2026-09-17; `frame`
came back as a length and survived, `extent` did not. It stayed as the
name for both halves, distinguished only by prose: `draw_at` bound the
caller's `part` to a parameter called `extent`, and `ActiveData` held two
`UiRegion`s that `draw_at` wrote `part: extent` from.
The box a parent asks a widget in is now the region, and where its
drawing ends up is its placement. `Painter`'s four holds accumulators
become the one `LayoutHolds` they were assembled into, which also drops
the name mapping between them.
The cold dump of 400 depth-5 trees is byte-identical across the change.
A widget draws in the box it is asked in and its answer is placed inside
that box by re-expressing the drawing; nothing is drawn again in a box an
answer chose. The offer machinery, whose job was to tell a measuring draw
from a placing one, goes with the placing draw. A span measures each child
from its cursor and moves fixed children to their slots with place_at; a
share child is asked once more in its decided slot with its frame narrowed
to it. A stack asks non-sizing children in the box its sizing child
decided. A scroll asks its content once and moves it to the scrolled
offset. A local redraw asks the retained question again and puts the
answer back where the parent placed it.
A symbolic length a child pinned composes through Part::Of exactly where
the part is the whole box less pixels, and pins the parent's own length
otherwise; dropping it let a pad reuse a drawing across a narrowed frame
of the same pixel length (shrinker seeds 60, 248 and 384 at depth 5).
Suite 114/114 including the two decided-box pins, fast oracle 11/11,
shrinker 400 seeds at depth 5 over all fifteen cases.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three things the measurements asked for, all about how much a box that came
from an answer costs.
**A part in the box's own coordinates.** Saying "less eleven pixels at the
end" in frame lengths from the box's start means reading how long the box is,
and a container whose box is its own answer then depends on its own answer:
`Pad` drew sixty-four times in one resize frame at seed 13, chasing its own
width. `Part::Of` says the same thing as a part of the box, which composes
without a length -- pixels are pixels wherever the box lands -- and what a
child under it holds for maps back through that part onto the container's
own box rather than onto the frame.
**One axis of the box at a time.** `extent_len` pinned both axes, so a span
dividing one of them held for one length of the other as well, and a resize
broke every span whose cross-axis answer moved.
**No lazy placement.** Leaving a child's answer to be placed at the end of
the parent's draw, rather than as the child answers, was meant to save a
recomposition. It costs one instead: the drawing is put in the part first
and in the answer's box after, and where it does not hold for both that is
two drawings rather than one. Seed 1 at depth 8 went from 391 widget draws
on a resize to 29 with it gone. The test that pinned three draws for a
numeric leaf in a span goes with it.
Seed 1 at depth 8, widget draws / distinct widgets / update, against #18's
head and against the commit this branch started from:
| phase | e44dea3 | 34cafb6 | here |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cold | 369/261/10.6 | 463/274/13.3 | 516/288/12.0 |
| repaint | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| many | 157/95/0.33 | 263/108/0.59 | 187/119/0.52 |
| size | 16/12/0.018 | 3/3 | 3/3/0.010 |
| scroll | 2/0.002 | 1 | 1/0.004 |
| resize | 13/13/0.019 | 22/15/0.032 | 24/76/0.090 |
Seed 13 at depth 8 is where the protocol still costs: `many` 1091 draws
against #18's 524, and `resize` 2215 against a frame #18 does not draw at
all. Both are the same shape -- an answer measured in one box and drawn in
another -- and the handoff says where that comes from.
Checked: fmt, clippy with -D warnings, 108 suite tests, 20 core tests, the
11 generated cases, and the shrinker at 400 trees of depth 5, which fails
seeds 2 (repaint) and 108 (reorder).
A widget is asked in two boxes rather than one. Its frame is what a fraction
it declares or reports is a fraction of, and it passes through a span, a
stack and a scroll unchanged, so `rel(0.5)` is half the same area however
many containers sit between: a frame is narrowed only by what is decided
above the widget -- a declared length, the root. Its extent is where the
drawing goes, given as a `Place` per axis: a part of the parent's own box,
measured in frame lengths from where that box starts, which the child either
fills or has its answer placed inside.
What that buys is that nothing under a container depends on where the
container sits. A container reads `extent_len` for the length it divides and
nothing about the start, so moving it re-places its children by re-adding
that start and draws nobody again; and a fraction is resolved once, against
the frame, rather than once per box it is composed through -- a stack sized
by a child that reports `rel(0.5)` no longer takes half of half.
`Place` replaces `DrawRegion`, `ExtentPlacement`, `widget_within`,
`measure_len`, `region()`, `placement()` and `box_of`. Primitives and masks
are written in the widget's own box's coordinates alone, so the drawing has
one reference rather than two. The placement pin goes with them: reading the
extent's length pins that length symbolically, and pins compose only where a
child's box is its parent's own.
Placing an answer waits for the end of the parent's draw or for the next ask
of that child in it, so a span child is one drawing and one move rather than
two moves.
`Pad` is transparent: its padding goes around what it pads and its child
keeps the outer frame, which is where `Outset` was going anyway. A fraction
under a pad is now a fraction of the frame rather than of the inset box.
Checked: fmt, clippy with -D warnings, 109 suite tests and 20 core tests in
debug, the 11 generated cases, and the shrinker at 400 trees of depth 5 over
all fifteen cases -- which still finds seed 108 under `reorder`, where a
wrapping text measured in one box and drawn in another settles differently
warm than cold. `redraw` therefore keeps the baseline's deferral for a box
that is not as long as the one the widget was measured in; the plan's step
6 is not done, and the next commit message or the handoff says why.
A widget's region is now held in the coordinates of the slot it draws in
rather than the window's, and `Painter::place` is how a container asks for a
slot: it draws a child it decides the box of and may decide again. Everything
under that slot is a fraction of its box, so placing the child a second time
is one entry to write whether it moved or changed length. A child drawn any
other way has no slot and shares its nearest ancestor's.
That is what keeps the chain short. `chain_cost` measured depth as the cost
-- free to 8, +42.6% at 16 -- and a slot per widget put a transcript's glyphs
past that for nothing, since almost every slot was zero. `Span`, `Aligned`
and `Scroll` are the containers that re-place a child after drawing it, and
`tests/layout.rs` pins that four widgets between a span and a leaf leave the
leaf's chain one deep.
`UiRegion::stretch`, `UiRegion::stretchable` and `UiScalar::stretch` are
gone. Nothing is inverted any more: a box that changed length is written to
its slot, and the descendants recompose against it in the shader. That also
retires the case the guard existed for, where a fixed length has no fraction
to recover -- `tests/layout.rs` now stretches a 40-tall row on its other
axis, which `stretchable` refused outright.
What still walks the CPU is deciding who must draw again, which no chain can
answer: `mark_resized` descends from the widget whose box changed and marks
anything whose own box changed length and whose drawing reads it. A part of
a box with no relative extent on an axis is a fixed length, and composing
into it leaves none either, so the walk stops where a length did not change
-- an 80-wide child in a widened row is not redrawn though it says `Redraw`.
`Span`, `Pad`, `Stack`, `Offset`, `Aligned`, `SetSize` and `LayerOffset` say
`Scale`: each places in fractions and offsets of its own box and none reads
the box's pixel length. `Scroll` and `MaxSize` do read pixels and stay
`Redraw`.
45 tests pass, five of them new. Render verification comes after the CPU
side, per the owner.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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