PyMEL: Layout n amount of elements in a formLayout effectivly?

Coding
1

Say that I have an unknown (n) number of elements (iconTextButtons for example) of varying sizes that are generated via a loop which creates these objects automagicly.
And say that these elements are inside a formLayout and that said elements are of varying sizes. (for example, one type of button has the dimensions 60x60 px, and a second type has 30x30 px)
Then how can you position these elements inside the formLayout effectivly, especially considering that you do not know the names of these objects?

2

This could be more or less complex depending on what you want to do; but basically you want to create two long lists of arguments, one for attatchForm and one for attachControl.

I usually do this using itertools.tee to create a list of a-b pairs between all the anonymous elements (WARNING ! Doing this from memory, not tested!!!)



import itertools
buttons = []
with pm.formLayout('form') as myform:
     for n in range(99):
        buttons.add(pm.button('button_%i' % n)

 # to create the n, n+1 list of buttons:
 m1, m2 = itertools.tee(buttons)

mg = 10 # margin
first_button = mg.next()
pm.formLayout(myform, e = True, af = [(first_button , 'top', mg), (first_button, 'left', mg), (first_button, 'right', mg)])
aflist =  []
aclist = []
for t, b in itertools.izip(m1, m2):
    aflist.append(  ( ( b, 'left', mg), (b, 'right', mg) ) )  # left and right form attach
    aclist.append(  ( b, 'top', mg, t) )  # attach bottom to top 

pm.formLayout(myform, e=True, af= aflist))
pm.formLayout(myform, e=True, ac= aclist))