Group uicontrol elements and ALIGN these GROUPS

I'm attempting to implement Grid, vertical and horizontal Layout classes in Matlab. To do so, I Group Buttons by putting them into Panels, where each Panel represents a Layout (e.g. a horizontal Layout). I have to group the buttons of one Layout, in order to be able to put one Layout into another (e.g. place a horizontal Layout in one cell of a grid layout). I have almost got it working, however, it seems, that Matlab's align-function doesn't Support Panels.

Is there a way of grouping Buttons and other uicontrol-objects and then aligning These Groups? It doesn't have to be uipanels.

Any help is highly appreciated.

Arduvast Gundar

P.S.: I know that this question has been asked before ( http://de.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/245542-is-there-a-trick-to-align-uipanel-objects-w-e-g-uicontrol-objects ), however, the only answer provided was to manually set the Panel positions, which is not a satisfactory Option for me (I would hate to lose the comfort of align and the whole idea of the grid-layout class is to do away with Matlabs terrible absolute Position values and enable auto-positioning).

Answer 1

[Arduvast Gundar]

So, this is what I've come up with so far, following the absolute-positioning-Approach. However, I would appreciate a more elegant way of doing this.

      function [newPosition] = align (obj,p_elems,varargin)
          currPos     = get(p_elems,'Position');
          currPos     = cell2mat(currPos);
          % Sort Elements:
          elemIndex   = [1:numel(p_elems)];
          elemIndex   = elemIndex';
          currPos     = [currPos elemIndex];
          l2rPos      = sortrows(currPos);
          t2bPos      = sortrows(currPos,2);
          noElems     = numel(p_elems);
          % get extreme values
          [maxLeft,lIdx]   = max(currPos(:,1));
          [maxRight,rIdx]  = max((currPos(:,1)+ currPos(:,3)));
          maxWidth         = abs(maxRight - maxLeft);
          [maxBottom,bIdx] = max(currPos(:,2));
          [maxTop,tIdx]    = max((currPos(:,2)+ currPos(:,4)));
          maxHeight        = abs(maxTop - maxBottom);

          xAlignMode  = varargin{1};
          yAlignMode  = '';
          xSpacing    = [];
          ySpacing    = [];
          vaIdx   = [1 0 2 0];    % xAlignMode, xSpacing, YAlignMode, ySpacing

          if strcmp(xAlignMode,'Fixed')
              vaIdx(2) = 2;
              vaIdx(3) = 3;
              vaIdx(4) = 4;
          else
              vaIdx(4) = 3;
          end

          yAlignMode  = varargin{vaIdx(3)};

          switch xAlignMode
              case 'Left'
                  newPosition(:,1)  = currPos(1,1);
              case 'Center'
                  newPosition(:,1)  = maxWidth/2 - (currPos(:,1)-currPos(:,3))/2;
              case 'Right'
                  newPosition(:,1) = currPos(1,1) + currPos(1,3) - currPos(:,3);
              case 'Distribute'
                  % Total width of Elements:
                  totalWidth  = sum(l2rPos(:,3));
                  unusedSpace = maxWidth - totalWidth;

                  spacer = 4; % default value
                  if unusedSpace > 0
                      spacer = unusedSpace/noElems;
                  end

                  tmpX = l2rPos(1,3) + spacer;

                  for iElem = 2:noElems
                      l2rPos(iElem,1) = tmpX;
                      tmpX = tmpX + l2rPos(iElem,3) + spacer;
                  end

                  newPosition = l2rPos;
              case 'Fixed'
                  spacer = varargin{vaIdx(2)};
                  tmpX = l2rPos(1,3) + spacer;

                  for iElem = 2:noElems
                      l2rPos(iElem,1) = tmpX;
                      tmpX = tmpX + l2rPos(iElem,3) + spacer;
                  end;

                  newPosition = l2rPos;
             case 'None'
                  newPosition = currPos;
             otherwise
                  Error('Incorrect Parameter for horizontal alignment mode');
          end

          switch yAlignMode
              case 'Bottom'
                  newPosition(:,2)  = currPos(1,2);
              case 'Middle'
                  newPosition(:,2)  = maxWidth/2 - (currPos(:,2)-currPos(:,4))/2;
              case 'Top'
                  newPosition(:,2) = currPos(1,2) + currPos(1,4) - currPos(:,4);
              case 'Distribute'
                  noElems = numel(p_elems);
                  % Total width of Elements:
                  totalHeight = sum(t2bPos(:,4));
                  unusedSpace = maxHeight - totalHeight;

                  spacer = 4; % default value
                  if unusedSpace > 0
                      spacer = unusedSpace/noElems;
                  end

                  tmpY = t2bPos(1,4) + spacer;

                  for iElem = 2:noElems
                      t2bPos(iElem,1) = tmpY;
                      tmpY = tmpY + t2bPos(iElem,4) + spacer;
                  end

                  newPosition = t2bPos;
              case 'Fixed'
                  spacer = varargin{vaIdx(4)};
                  tmpY = t2bPos(1,4) + spacer;
                  for iElem = 2:noElems
                      t2bPos(iElem,2) = tmpY;
                      tmpY = tmpY + t2bPos(iElem,4) + spacer;
                  end;
                  newPosition = t2bPos;
              case 'None'
                  newPosition = currPos;
              otherwise
                  Error('Incorrect Parameter for horizontal alignment mode');
          end

          newPosition = sortrows(newPosition,5);
          newPosition = newPosition(:,1:4);
      end