World: r3wp

So, what I need to do is make the F keys stick to a particular screen, 
rather than being global.

the parameters that are available are face and event

So, how can I use the face to identify the particular screen ... 
without too much work!

http://demo-client.s3.amazonaws.com/synapse.exe

I ditched the Windows installer and my app now does the installation 
of all the accessory programs viz. ghostscript, gsview, imagemagick, 
jarnal etc

which is a bit of a  cognitive load on the users :(
 

Yes, Qtask has the same problem...  Having looked at many applications 
that have LOTS of tabs, medical, legal, etc. I don't know yet what 
way around it there is.


One idea I have is that you come in to a mostly blank set of screens, 
with a few tabs, and a button that brings up a dialog.
It is a giant menu of things you can ask to be on the screen.

You pick from this, and at LEAST then everything that is there you 
put there.
Also, you can turn everything on quickly as a feature.

And you will always know if you don't see it, it is probably on that 
menu of things.

Don't understand.

I guess I can use the text content of the face to work out where 
I am .. and hope I have unique text strings.

I do hide buttons etc .. which only appear based on choices the user 
makes

Trying to simplify what the user can see ... to reduce the possible 
actions the user can take.

ie. less is more sort of thing

Or, I colour code buttons .. making the most likely selected button 
green ... so the users can work using their hind brains

the occipital cortex sits above the brain stem and cerebellum

One of the possible solutions I wondered about is to create multiple 
different applications somehow sharing the data ... like an IOS desktop

This is what MS has done by creating the control panel .. did Gnome 
copy this?

I couldn't get Synapse to run, but was wondering if soft keys is 
the answer. If you've used an HP48 or similar calculator, it has 
6 F-keys which are assigned to different operations depending on 
which screen is shown.

Nope, never used an HP48

which problem did you get with Synapse??

But that is what I am trying to do .. assign diferent ops based on 
the current screen.

It seemed to install fine and Cheyenne is running. But I was not 
allowed to connect to it.

oh .. don't use localhost

Cheyenne is just there for displayiing timelines.

Graham, I think a lot of measuring devices use this technique with 
soft keys. If you have a device with a fixed set of blank keys next 
to the display, they would likely work as softkeys.

The trick then is to define them per screen.

yes... I have an app that works in a similar way. the answer was 
to construct a dialect that describes each screen with well-defined 
parts.

hmm.. I didn't do that ... so I guess I just have to use the window 
title.

yes... not possible to slap on a dialect if your app is that complex.

Graham - not sure about RebGUI, but VID generates face structures 
at the end anyway. So - I am not sure you can easily make F keys 
local to certain screen. Well, maybe you can, but you would have 
to look how RebGUI handles events underneath. What I disliked about 
some tab styles was that all your tabs are always instantiated, whereas 
I wanted load-as-selected behaviour. That could help a bit in your 
situation.

With one of my apps, I used win32 wrapper to get-window-text function, 
and I set window's text title. Not sure you can change title when 
you select different tab? What about setting one global variable 
for such purpose, which you would set each time when entering new 
screen? Maybe lot's of work to do it now, as you have 300 screens 
already, but :-)

In VID you can handle F keys by window with the event handler of 
the window. Hope that what you call a screen is a window :-\

Pekr, you can create empty tabs, and then replace the tab contents 
dynamically.

Didier, I'll have to look at Rebgui to see if it can do this .. but 
at present I can use the window text.

Of course, if a window always had an "OK" button function, a "Cancel" 
function and a "Save" function, this would make things somewhat easier.

So, I think I need to alter the display function to create default 
handlers for the function keys

Graham - there are some aproaches out there. Some apps choose some 
pre-app-run dialog box, which let's you select, where you want to 
go. I am not much comfort with it, e.g. Open Office 3.0 starts that 
way. Othere do use different aproch, e.g. - on the left side, you 
have icon-list element, which can be even tabbed. That defines your 
right pane content

http://www.megaleecher.net/uploads/spybot_search_and_destroy.jpg


You can have many icons, on many tabs, so many options of how to 
organise your content pane ....

Graham - where's you green color? :-) I can't almost read your name 
on my notebook's LCD now ...

I'm feeling a little off colour today

Just wondering if Vid+ addresses this sort of issue too?

it is imo not question of particular GUI system, but the question 
of widgets available. That is why I also wanted split-screen, resizable. 
But - those issues are not RebGUI related, so we are most probably 
chatting in wrong group ...

Instead of ... unview/only face/parent-face/parent-face ... why not 

unview/ony find-window face

?

Ashley hasn't been on line here since xmas eve ... is he on a rather 
extended holiday??

Graham - do you change button colors? E.g. if I set button blue in 
dialect, I actually get 3 color - normal state, over state, pressed 
state. But those colors are like color wheel - totally unrelated 
:-) I wonder if color related code reflects changed button color?

I do change button colors ... but I haven't noticed anything odd

display "test" [button blue "Hello"] do-events

button is blue. But with over effect, going to green (default?), 
and with press, going pink :-)

not for me

what version are  you using?

Oh ... latest version huh?  I'm not using that one.

Of course using find-window is not as efficient.

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