About Adjusting Space along the Right Side or Bottom of a Dialog Box (DCL)

A dialog box may contain unused space along its right side or bottom.

Note: DCL support in AutoLISP is limited to Windows only.

You can define a text tile and explicitly specify a width greater than the width required by its current value. For example, the following defines a tile that does not display anything (its value is null) until an application sets its value:

: text {
  key = "l_text";
  width = 18;
  fixed_width = true;
}

In the previous example, the width attribute reserves space for 18 characters in the dialog box. The application can add text with a statement like the following:

(set_tile "l_text" "Bylayer")

Because "Bylayer" does not need all 18 characters, the dialog box has surplus space along its right side. A similar situation occurs when displaying an error message with an errtile. Unless an error message is currently shown, it looks as if there is extra space at the bottom of the dialog box. In this case, an extra spacer tile at the top of the dialog box can help balance the vertical layout.