Factorio Forums

I was hoping that at some point we might be able to adjust the margins of GUI elements. Right now, I see that we can adjust the padding for an element via its LuaStyle, but not the margin.

In the case of a button, adjusting the padding of the element changes the size between our button text/sprite and the edge of the button. Adjusting the margin would affect the space between the edge of the button and the surrounding elements.

In a brief discussion on discord, Aidiakapi chimed in with pointing out how the "box model" works in regards to margins of neighboring elements:

Aidiakapi wrote:In addition, in things like the box model, margins collapse (ie. top margin collapses with the bottom margin of the element above it, basically:

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effective_margin = max(top_element.bottom_margin, bottom_element.top_margin))

Box model is apparently the model used in web browsers. Though, this might be beyond the necessary scope of what anyone would need in Factorio GUI development.

The GUI has no concept of margins so it's not possible to do what you're asking

As i'm not too familiar with the terms here i googled for box model margin and found this picture:
https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/images/boxdim.png (hrng...how do i even include an external picture in a post >_>, anyway...)

So if i understand this correctly then can't the margin be created by using padding on the buttons parent element (e.g. an invisible flow whichs only purpose it to create the margin)?

That would be a LOT of overhead.

It seems what I want ought to be possible via horizontal_spacing & vertical_spacing style modifications, but I don't seem to be able to set these on a flow, though they seem to be part of every flow's style. viewtopic.php?f=28&t=53907

eradicator wrote:So if i understand this correctly then can't the margin be created by using padding on the buttons parent element (e.g. an invisible flow whichs only purpose it to create the margin)?

Personally I make my margin with tables, since the flow does not manage vertical and horizontal space.

But it is obvious that LuaElement and LuaStyle should be inspired by HTML.