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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Universal On-Screen Grid and Mouse-Driven GUI Layout Editor

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Teo1
Regular Member

Joined: 06/05/2023
Location: Romania
Posts: 42

Posted: 02:08pm 13 Sep 2026

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Hi everyone,
First of all, thank you to the creator and the community for making the PicoMite such an amazing platform. The graphical and GUI capabilities are already incredibly powerful.
I have a feature request that would completely transform the workflow for designing user interfaces across all supported displays.
Would it be possible to implement a built-in graphical alignment grid combined with mouse/pointer interaction for positioning elements?
To align with the existing MMBasic design language, here is a proposal for how the commands could look:
1. System-Wide Grid Control
- OPTION GRID ON [, spacing] [, color] – Enables a visual overlay grid on any connected screen with custom pixel spacing (e.g., 10 or 20 pixels) and a specific color. This acts as a background helper layer.
- OPTION GRID OFF – Disables and removes the visual grid from the display.
2. Interactive Visual Layout Mode
- GUI DESIGN ON – Puts the system into an interactive layout editor mode.
- If a mouse, trackball, or touch screen is active, developers can click/tap and drag existing GUI elements (controls, buttons, switches) or text blocks directly across the grid.
- Elements automatically snap to the grid lines based on the current OPTION GRID spacing.
- GUI DESIGN OFF – Exits the interactive editor mode and locks all elements back into place.
3. Outputting the Final Layout Coordinates
- GUI DUMP – A command that prints the updated X/Y coordinates and parameters of all active GUI elements directly to the console (serial output), making it effortless to copy-paste the finalized, pixel-perfect layout coordinates back into the main program code.
Right now, creating clean layouts requires a lot of trial-and-error with coordinates in the code. Having a visual grid and the ability to tweak positions with a mouse would save hours of development time and make UI design much more intuitive.
Thank you for considering this suggestion, and thank you for your continuous hard work on PicoMite!
Best regards,
Teo

matherp
Guru

Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 11850

Posted: 04:35pm 13 Sep 2026

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This is too niche (and big) to be part of the firmware. The correct solution is to write a program in Basic that does what you want. Working with an AI this should be possible in short order
Edited 2026-09-14 02:37 by matherp

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